
cPV 











■^ -0 



OUTLINE 



Historical Method 



BY 

FRED MORROW FLING, Ph.D., 

P7-ofesior cf European His oiy in the U/iivers.'iy 
of Neb aska. 



LINCOLN 

J. H. MiLLKR. 
lS9i>. 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

my 2 1903 

Copyright Entry 

ClASfa^ XXc No 

COPY B. 



Copyrighted 1899, 

by 

y. M. Fling. 



,V 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER. PAGE. 

I. Introduction 5 

II. Sources, Bibliography, and Auxiliary Sci- 
ences 15 

III. External Criticism: Genuineness of the 

Source 26 

IV. External Criticism: Localization of the 

Source 36 

V. External Criticism: Analysis of the Source 

and Restoration of the Text 49 

VI. Internal Criticism: Interpretation of the 

Source and Value of the Source 63 

VII. Internal Criticism: . Establishment of the 

Facts 75 

VIII. Synthetic Operations : Imagining the 
Facts. Grouping the Facts, and Con- 

structi Vf Reasoning 87 

IX. Synthetic Operations: Environment and 

the Philosophy of History 100 

X. Synthetic Operations: Exposition 113 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTION. 

WE shall have better history teaching when 
we have better trained teachers; and 
we shall have the trained teachers 
when the teachers themselves, and those who 
employ them, realize that history can be taught 
only by those who have been prepared for the 
work. 

As the matter stands to-day, it is the popular 
belief that any intelligent person may teach a 
class in history without special training, or, with 
no other knowledge than general information, 
may participate in a discussion upon methods 
of teaching history and what the object of his- 
torical study is. It is not an uncommon thmg 
for a college graduate, who has devoted all his 
time to Greek and Latin, or to science, to have 
a class in history assigned to him. He may not 
be particularly pleased with the assignment, 
but it does not strike him as at all incongruous. 
While, on the other hand, no good high school 
principal would assign a class in Greek to a 
man who had not been trained for that work. 
What is the reason for this distinction ? It is 
not far to seek. As history has been taught, 
and is still taught, in the high school, no spe- 
cial training is necessary. Any bright man can 
read over the lesson and hear the class recite 
it. The large majority of history teachers 
never engaged in a bit of original research and 



6 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

have no more idea of what constitutes history 
a science than has the intelligent public outside 
the school room. 

This unscientific spirit crops out of all the 
discussions in teachers' associations and of most 
of the articles in educational, papers. 

The reasons so commonly given to justify the 
study of history can be traced to the same 
source. Instead of studying history for the 
same reason that we study botany or chemistry, 
that is, for its own sake, we must study it for 
the ethical training it gives, for its power of 
forming character, and so on ad infinitum. 
Now, history is not ethics, and it claims a right 
to an independent existence. It deals with the 
evolution of man in society, and no further 
reason need be given to justify the study of 
history than the necessity of knowing how that 
evolution has taken place. If the teachers of 
history can be induced to see how rational this 
view of their work is, one long step will have 
been taken toward improving the work. 

But what is this training that the teacher 
must have, if better work is to be done and if 
history is to take its place by the side of Latin, 
Greek, mathematics, and the sciences as a dis- 
ciplinary study? She must Itarn what the 
process is by which an historical narrative is 
constructed, and she must go through that 
process herself. She can no more become a 
satisfactory teacher of history without this 
training than she could become a successful 
teacher of chemistry without laboring with her 
own hands in the laboratorv. It is difficult to 



HISTORICAL METHOD. " 

make the teachers realize this, but if the cru- 
sade for better history teaching is to succeed, 
they must realize it. 

This subject of how history is written, I have 
treated in a general manner elsewhere; it is my 
intention to treat it now more in detail. But 
before taking up the successive steps in the con- 
struction of an historical narrative, I wish to 
point out the differences between the historical 
method and the method employed in the nat- 
ural sciences. 

In the natural sciences, the so-called method 
of direct observation is made use of. The ob- 
ject itself is studied directly either with the 
naked eye or with the microscope. Not one ob- 
servation but many are made and under the 
most favorable circumstances. The observa- 
tions thus made are recorded at once, and in 
exact, scientific language, the meaning of which 
is not ambiguous. But scientific truth is not 
established by the work of one man. Other 
scientists must make similar observations and 
obtain like results before these results can be 
accepted as fully demonstrated. It is only 
necessary to recall the controversy over the 
supposed discovery of a cure for consumption 
by Dr. Koch, of Berlin, to make clear how ex- 
acting the scientists are, and how difficult it is 
to establish a new truth bej^ond the possibility 
of doubt. 

Is the historical process similar to this? Not 
at all. It is quite different. History deals with 
the past. It may be the past of this morning, 
of the war with Spain, or of the Persian wars 



8 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 



of Greek history, but it is always the past. 
Yet it is not with the past in an indefinite way 
that history has to do. It is with the past in 
which human society has developed and the 
problem with which it deals is this: How has 
the present complex, world-society been evolved 
from the primitive, disconnected beginnings of 
four or five thousand years ago ? It is its busi- 
ness to reconstruct the process and to describe 
the successive steps. When it has done that, it 
has done its whole duty. 

But how does it perform this duty ? What is 
its method? It cannot be the method of direct 
o})servation, the method of the natural sciences, 
and the reason is very plain; the objects are not 
here to be observed. The past can ])e known 
to us only through its records, technically called 
the sources. These sources are of two kinds; 
material remains and traditions. The remains 
are all of those things that were actually part 
and parcel of the life of past generations; bodies 
of men, clothing, weapons, houses, roads, 
bridges, newspapers, letters, coins, etc. This 
subdivision of the sources will be better appre- 
ciated if a list 1)6 m:ide of the material o))jects 
that will form the sources for the history of our 
own society. One of the characteristics of 
modern historical method is the increase in the 
variety of the source material. Some of our 
most valuable information is drawn from ma- 
terial that past generations never thought of 
putting to such a use. 

The other main division of source material is 
tradition. It is of three kinds; oral, written, 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 9 

and pictorial. Pictorial tradition has attained 
a great significance in our generation and a 
great value that it did not formerly possess. 
This change is due to photography. For the 
historian of the Napoleonic era, the great war 
scenes by French contemporary artists are of 
little value; while for the historian of our 
war with Spain, the snap-shots taken by the 
camera of a war correspondent will form the 
most valuable source material. 

Oral tradition is the least reliable of all. It 
is the account of an event that has passed from 
lip to lip and has been handed down from one 
generation to another. It soon becomes utterly 
unreliable and worthless, although it may have 
been very valuable when it came from the lips 
of the eye witness. 

The written tradition, upon which the his- 
torian chiefly relies for his knowledge of the 
thoughts and acts of men in the past, if it be a 
source, contains the record of what has been 
seen or heard by an eye or ear witness. 

This is the material with which the historian 
works. He observes it directly, it is true, but 
what he observes is not the event, not the 
object, but the record of an observation made 
upon that object. And what an observation it 
often is! Made, perhaps, by an incompetent per- 
son, who, at the time, had no intention of record- 
ing it, it is onesided and incomplete, and written 
down so long after the event that what little 
value it originally had has been materially im- 
paired, if not wholly destroyed. Add to this, 
the fact that it is expressed in unscientific 



10 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 



language, and some of the difficulties of the 
problem will be clear. What would be the 
value to the chemist of a series of experiments, 
if, — to borrow the illustration of a French 
writer, — his knowledge of them were based 
upon the accidental observations of the janitor 
of the laboratory ? Not only, then, is the his- 
torian of the remote past unable to observe the 
events directly, "but it is very rare that the 
documetits of which he makes use contain ex- 
act observations. He cannot, moreover, make 
use of the records of observations scientifically 
established, that, in the other sciences, may, 
and often do, take the place of direct observa- 
tion." 

His method must be that of indirect observa- 
tion. He starts with the record and attempts 
to work his way back to the fact, to see the 
fact as the observer saw it. The fact is the 
goal of his eflPorts, not the starting point, as in 
the work of the natural scientist. The docu- 
ments that form the starting point for the his- 
torian are nothing more " than the traces of 
ps\'chological operations." In order to infer 
from the document the fact that gave rise to it, 
the student of history must retrace the whole 
eeiies of psychological operations that lay be- 
tween the fact and the written record of the 
observation, retracing them in the inverse 
order, beginning with the document. 

The object of the procedure is to establish 
the genuineness of the document and the value 
of the observations. If the document is not 
genuine, we need not take it into account; and 



HISTORICAL METHOD. H 

an observation is practically useless until it has 
been localized, that is, until we know lohen it 
was made, tohere it was made, and by whom it 
was made. 

From this crucible of criticism, the contents 
of a document come forth separated into single 
affirmations, each affirmation bearing the mark 
of its value. Ihis is the foundation work that 
places in the hands of the historian observa- 
tions similar to those possessed by the scien- 
tist, but seldom, if ever, as exact or as valuable. 
The work of historical criticism is extremely 
difficult, hut ahsolutely necessary. 

It is, however, the portion of method to 
which the least attention is paid in our colleges, 
although it is the best developed part of 
metho<l. The natural credulity of the human 
mind leads the student and the historian, too, 
for that matter, to accept with the faith of a 
child the evidence that comes to them, and to 
utilize observations without having first localized 
them. Here is where the reform must begin. 
The student must be taught that " historical • 
work is critical work par excelhmce.'''' and that 
he is sure to fail if he undertakes it without 
having been previously put on his guard 
against his natural instinct to accept without 
examination anonymous information and to 
utilize good, bad, and indifferent documents 
without distinction. This work should be done 
in the colleges; it is very seldom that it is 
done there. 

In future papers I shall give a more detailed 



12 HISTORICAL METHOD, 

treatment of criticism. My purpose at this 
time is to bring out the characteristic feature 
of historical method, namely, that of indirect 
observation and to distinguish it from the direct 
observation of the natural sciences. 

As the material with which the historian 
deals consists largely of '' the traces of psycho- 
logical operations," it is perfectly clear that the 
student of history must have at least a working 
knowledge of psychology. Much good his- 
tory, it might be said, was written before such 
a science as ps^^chology existed. True, but it 
was written by men who through introspection 
knew much about the workings of their own 
minds, and through experience much about the 
workings of their fellows' minds. They ap- 
plied this to their work, sometimes consciously, 
more often unconsciously. To-day, in addition 
to his own introspective study and his experi- 
ence, the student of history has at his disposal 
scientific treatises upon the operations of the 
human mind, and is taught to apply this knowl- 
edge consciously in his work. Without such a 
training, he is unable to trace the mental proc- 
ess by which an observation Is made, and thus 
determine its value; without such a training, 
he is unable to control his own mental opera- 
tions when he attempts to imagine the event 
described by the witness. The more conscious 
these processes become, the more likely are 
they to become exact and scientific. 

The teacher of history, then, should be a 
constant student of herself, observing carefully 
every mental process that has any r»3lation to 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 13 

historical method; through reading and travel, 
she should enlarge her experience, and, finally, 
she should systematize her psychological knowl- 
edge by the careful study of some good work 
on psychology. 

Psj'chology is as likely to throw as much 
light upon the problems of history teaching as 
it has already thrown upon those of historical 
method. It teaches the student of history that 
" the eye sees in an object what the eye brings 
power of seeing," and the student of history, 
become the teacher of history, knows that the 
boys and girls in her classes can acquire a 
knowledge of past society from the sources just 
so far as their knowledge of present society has 
given the eye power to sec, and no further. 
We know that this mass of knowledge has been 
acquired unconsciously and to a very large ex- 
tent has been used unconsciously. One of the 
innovations of the future in history teaching 
will be the care for the systematic acquisition 
through direct observation of such knowledge 
of existing society as will enable the young 
student to understand the past. This work 
nuist be done in the e;irly years and lay the 
foundation for the study of ancient society. It 
has long been a question as to whether history 
study should begin with ancient history or Avith 
the history of the locality in which the child 
lives. Psychology would seem to have an- 
swered this question once for all. It says the 
child can begin in but one way, and that is by 
the direct observation of the society in which it 
lives. When throu_;h this direct observation 



14 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

the eye has acquired the " power of seeing," 
the attention may then be turned to the societies 
of the past that may be studied only indirectly 
and by the light of the knowledge that has been 
acquired. Some excellent suggestions for this 
direct observation of society will be found in 
one of the chapters of Professor Mace's book 
on Method. It is, to my mind, the most im- 
portant chapter in the book. 

If this chapter, and those that follow, 
accomplish what I hope they may accomplish, 
the teacher that reads them and needs their 
help will not accept on trust the statements 
that I have made, but will proceed to test them, 
and by so doing make the truths they contain 
her own property. Let her satisfy herself by 
dealing with source material (accounts of the 
battle of Manila by eye witnesses — August 
Century^ that the method of the historian 
must be that of indirect observation; let her 
see, at the same time, how necessary to her 
work a Tinowledge of psychology is, and if she 
has not already done so, let her take up the 
study of the subject; and last of all let her 
convince herself of the need of a systematic 
study of existing society by her young pupils, 
and learn from the examination of the life of 
the village or city in which she lives what fas- 
cinating material for direct observation lies 
unused around her. Such effort will give her 
a new insight into the nature of historical work, 
and will enable her to become a valued helper 
in the crusade for the better teaching of 
history. 



CHAPTER II. 



SOURCES, BIBLIOGRAPHY, AND AUXILIARY 
SCIENCES. 

IN the preceding chapter, I emphasized the 
fact that to teach history successfully one 
must know how to study history scientific- 
ally. It is then with the subject of Historical 
Method — the method of studyiug and not the 
method of teaching history — that this and the 
following chapters will have to do. 

There has always been more or less method 
in the way in which history has been studied 
and written, but for a long time this method 
was largely unconscious. This is established 
by the fact that only in our generation has a 
literature of any size, containing treatises upon 
method of considerable length, come into exist- 
ence. But one work has come down to us from 
the Greeks, Lucian's "How Should History be 
Written," and this treatise deals, for the most 
part, with the artistic form of the historical 
narrative. Rome and the Middle Ages contrib- 
uted practically nothing to method. In fact, 
the period of the Middle Ages represented a 
reaction in historical writing. A new era be- 
gan with the Renaissance. 

The awakening of interest in the past, that 
was one of the characteristics of the Renais- 
sance, contributed largely to the development 
of historical method. Men must gather ma- 
terial and experiment with it for generations 



16 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 



before the data for a work on method can be 
g^athered. Now the first modern treatises on 
method were preceded by many oreuerations of 
practical work; by the publication of great col- 
lections of sources, with critical notes and aids 
of various kinds. Then appeared the first at- 
tempt to describe the method by which the 
work was done. But before our day the works 
were few; thej" appeared at lonor intervals and 
were incomplete in their treatment of method. 
Each work, however, contributed something, 
and every time the attempt to formulate the 
rules of historical science was renewed, there 
was a broader base to build upon, as each man 
studied the work of his predecessors before do- 
ing his own. 

Of the works produced in the sixteenth, 
seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, there are 
a few that stand out from among the rest: 
those of the Frenchman Bodin, "Methodus ad 
facilem historiarum cognitionem" (1566); of 
the German Voss, "Ars historica" (1623); of 
the Frenchman Mabillon, "De re diplomatica" 
(1681); of the Frenchman Du Fresnoy, " Me- 
thode pour 6tudier I'histoire" (1713); of the 
Italian Vico, "Principi della scienza nuova" 
(1725). 

In our centur3\ the quality of work has 
increased and the quality improved. The Ger- 
mans were the leaders, and the most important 
works are those of Wachsmuth, ' ' Entwurf einer 
Theorie der Geschichte " (1820); of Droysen 
"Grundriss der Historik" (1867)— published 
in this country in a translation by Andrews; 



HISTORICAL MKTIIOD. IT 

Gervinus, "GrandzLige der Historik " (18 >7); 
Lorenz ''Die Geschiclitswissenschaf t " (1886, 
1891); of Dolci, the Italian, " Sintesi di scieiiza 
storica" (1887); and of the Englishman Free- 
man, ''The Methods of Historical Study" 
(1886). 

Up to 1889, these were the most important 
treatises that had appeared on method. They 
dealt with the subject in a summary way — many 
of the works being only pamphlets — and often 
treated only parts of method instead of the 
whole. There was need of a work that should 
gather up these partial results, combine them, 
and attempt to present them in a systematic 
and detailed manner. Such a work was puo- 
lished by Bernheim in 1889. The title is " Lehr- 
buch der historischen Methode." It contains 
six hundred pages and describes in detail all the 
steps in the construction of an historical narra- 
tive. The book marks an epoch. For the first 
time a real text-book on method had been pro- 
duced. In 1897 a more popular work was pub- 
lished in France by Langlois and Seignobos, en- 
titled, "Introduction aux etudes historiques." 
Although the work does not pretend to be an 
exhaustive treatise like that of Bernheim, yet 
certain divisions of the subject are dealt with 
in a much more satisfactory manner and really 
supplement the work of Bernheim. 

Besides these two hand-books treating of the 
whole subject, many monographs, or partial 
studies, have been published, so that the litera- 
ture upon method has become one of quite re- 
spectable size, and can not be neglected . by any 
serious student of history. 



18 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 



But what is the result of all this study by so 
many centuries of historians ? 

A conscious operation in the treatment of 
historical material, an understanding of what 
has already been accomplished, and a pretty 
fair appreciation of what remains to be done. 
As yet, the form in which the results are pre- 
sented has not been fixed by tradition; but there 
is a quite ffeneral agreement as to the subject 
matter and order of arrangement, although 
there is some disagreement as to the nomencla- 
ture to be employed. 

Beruheim, after an introduction dealing with 
such questions as the definition of history, the 
relation of history to other sciences, and the pos- 
sibility of attaining scientific certainty in his- 
torical study, divides his work into four parts: 

(1) Quellenkunde, treating of bibliography, 
source collections, and the auxiliary sciences; 

(2) Kritik, treating of the genuineness of the 
sources, their origin and value, of the estab- 
lishment of historical fact, and the arrange- 
ment of the facts established: (3) Auffassung, 
dealing with the interprctati )U and grouping 
of I'acts, with their physical, psychical, and so- 
cial environment, and with the philosophy of 
history; (4) Darstellung, or the formulation of 
the results obtained in the preceding investi- 
gation. 

The grouping of Langlois and Seignobos is 
somewhat simpler. Their work is divided into 
three parts: (1) Les connaissances pr^alcihles^ 
or preliminary knowledge, equivalent to Bern- 
heim's Quellenkunde; (2) Operations analyt- 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 19 

iques^ embracing criticism, interpretation, and 
establishment of the facts; (3) Oph^ations syn- 
tMtiques^ or combination of the facts and con- 
structive reasoning together with the presenta- 
tion of results. 

There is one important difference between 
the arrangement of Bernheim and that of Lang- 
lois and Seignobos; in the first, interpretation 
follows the establishment of the fact; in the 
last, it precedes it. With that exception, 
there is substantial agreement in the arrange- 
ment of the two works. 

It would be safe to say then, that, whatever 
title may be given to the parts, a work on 
method naturally falls into three or four parts; 
four, if the narrative, or presentation of the re- 
sults, forms an independent division. 

A moment's thought will show that all this 
is nothing more than a careful description of 
the procedure of the student of history from 
the time that he selects his subject for investi- 
gation until he commits the results of this in- 
vestigation to paper. It is my intention in thia 
chapter and the following to sketch rapidly 
the successive steps in this procedure as they 
are described in the works just referred to. I 
hope that it may be helpful to teachers that 
have not access to these works or who would be 
miable to read them. If they would draw the 
greatest benefit from this study, let them fol- 
low the process step by step, investigating 
some historical topic in accordance with the 
method described. Let them repeat the proc- 
ess again and again, and careful scientific work 
will soon become second nature. 



20 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

The rest of this chapter will be devoted to 
whiit Bernheim calls Quellenkunde and Lanorlois 
and Seii^nobos, Connaisance prkalahles. 

Sources were defined in the preceding chap- 
ter, and Bernheim's classification of them under 
remains and tradition was given. It is clear 
that, if there are no sources, no history can be 
written. If a student is desirous of investi- 
gating a subject, he asks himself the questions: 
''Are there any sources? What are they? 
Where are they?" If there are no sources, 
the subject, however interesting, can not, of 
course^ be investigated. Great masses of 
source material are being destroyed in various 
ways every day. On a recent tour of investi- 
gation in France, I learned in two places, at 
8t. Martin, on the He do Re, and at Saintes, on 
the neighboring mainland, that valuable 
archives, containing sources for which I vras 
seeking, had recently been destroyed by fire. 
It is a common thing in the course of an inves- 
tigation to run across traces of sources that 
once existed and perhaps exist to-day, l)ut can 
not be found. Often sources are known to be 
hidden in private archives, to which access is 
denied. 

But even when the student knows that sources 
exist and where they exist, his work is often 
rendered diflicult by the fact that his sources 
are scattered and a use of them would oblige 
him to make long journeys. His work will be 
lightened if a government has acquired all of 
this material and placed it in a central depot. 
It will be lightened even more if this manu- 



HISTOKICAL METHOD. 21. 

script material has been published and he can 
study it comfortably by his own fireside. 
While the study of written tradition may thus 
be made easy, there are certain kinds of source 
material that can be studied only upon the spot. 
An exact copy of a manuscript may be studied 
even m^re satisfactorily than the manuscript 
itself, but neither photographs of an historical 
spot, nor descriptions of it, nor both, will do 
for the student what direct observation will do. 
But whether he can only study at home or 
can also go abroad, it behooves the student of 
history to make the acquaintance of the great 
source collections that have been published 
by governments, associations, and individuals. 
The contemporary histories of Greece and 
Kome have been carefully edited in ihe original 
Greek or Latin, and also translated into English. 
The Greek and Roman inscriptions have been 
gathered up from every side, carefully restored 
and published. Hundreds of specialists are en- 
gaged in making public the Latin sources of 
the Middle Ages, and the sources of the later 
periods composed in the language of the vari- 
ous peoples. Some periods have been thor- 
oughly worked, while others are still almost 
virgin soil. So difficult is much of this work, 
so nice and varied the skill required of the 
worker, that many men do nothing but this: 
they simply prepare the sources that others 
may make use of them. Historical work is be- 
coming every year more differentiated, and to 
make it successful the heartiest co-operation 
must exist among the workers. 



22 HISTORICAL MKTHOD. 

The source collections of which I have boon 
writing- are made up of complete documents, 
narratives, etc. There are other source col- 
lections of a more elementary character, com- 
posed of short typical documents and of 
extracts from narrative sources. These are 
for the use of beginners. The new method of 
history work has called into existence a large 
amount of this material. From Harvard Uni- 
versil}- have come exlraels and documi'iits on 
United States History; from the University of 
Pennsylvania, " Original Sources of European 
History;" from the University of Michigan, 
sources of English History; from the Univer- 
sity of Indiana, sources of European History; 
and from the University of Nebraska, sources 
of European and American History. 

But suppose that there are sources and that 
they are accessible, how does the student learn 
what they are and where they are? It is the 
work of bibliography to tell him this. 

After the subject for investigation has been 
selected, his first step is to seek for a book that 
will answer these two questions for him. Such 
a work is not always to be found. Bibliogra- 
phy is not in an advanced stage of develop- 
ment. The larger number of works upon 
which the student must de{)end are out of date 
and others are thoroughly unscientific In 
many of them, no distinction is made between 
sources and narratives based upon the sources, 
and, for the most part, when the sources are 
enumerated there is nothing to indicate their 
contents nor the value of the contents. The 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 23 

most of this work the advanced student 18 
obliged to do for himself. Historical study 
■will be much easier when good bibliographies 
have been prei)ared. 

Although he may have learned what the 
sources are that he needs, the student is often 
in ignorance of the whereabouts of his sources, 
especially if they consist of rare printed books 
or manuscripts. Here bibliography might 
help him, but it seldom does. The large and 
wealthy libraries ought to have the books and 
certain archives should contain the manuscripts. 
But books and manuscripts are not always 
where they should be, and even when they are 
they are very often not catalogued. 

Yet however incomplete these bibliographi- 
cal aids are, they are all we have and are im- 
proving rapidly each day. The student that 
does not know how to make use of them will 
find himself badly handicapped. A most help- 
ful little book upon historical bibliography 
was recently published in Paris. The author 
is Langlois and the title Manuel de hiUiograjyhie 
histoinque. 

When the student, through the use of bibli- 
ography, has succeeded in reaching the sources, 
he finds that his work can not go on without 
the use of one or more auxiliary sciences. It 
may be a manuscript that he has before him, 
and it may be incumbent upon him to deter- 
mine its genuineness before using it. The per- 
formance of such a task would call for a knowl- 
edge oi palaeography^ or the science of writing, 
of diplomatics^ or the science of documents, and 



2-t HI TORICAL MKTIIOD. 

perhaps several otl; rs. If it is known that 
the document is genuine, the student must at 
least have a knowledge of the language in 
which it is written in order to interpret it. 
For some periods, such a knowledge is not easy 
to acquire. The investigator in the tields of 
Grecian, Roman, or Mediaeval History must 
have a knowledge oi pMlologij^ or the .science of 
language. He must be acquaint d with all the 
changes that take place in the meaning of a 
word in order to understand how it is used at a 
particular time. When the student comes to 
criticise his sources, and to determine their 
value, he tinds that a knowledge of psychol- 
ogy is necessary; in arranging his facts, he 
must make use of chronology ; in coml)iniug 
them, of logic; in forming the background, he 
is aided by geography^ ethnology^ economics^ 
and sociology; and in searching for the deeper 
meanings of historical development, by philos- 
ophy. These are the most important of* the 
auxiliary sciences. There are, of course, many 
others, determined by the peculiar nature of 
the subject investigated. 

It would appear, then, that historical inves- 
tigation is neither easy nor simple. And why 
should it be? It has to do with the most dif- 
ficult and complex of subjects — the evolution of 
man in society. We are just coming to a real- 
ization of the magnitude of the task to be 
accomplished in correctly tracing this evolu- 
tion, and of the only way in which it may be 
accomplished. The uninitiated are accustomed 
to sneer at the specialist in history who con- 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 2o 

fines himself to a limited field and works it 
thoroughly. But it is the sneer of ignorance. 
Such special iztilion in the natural f-ciemes is 
taken as a milter of course. Wc must learn 
that the same reasons make specialization im- 
perative in historical sciences. AVithout spe- 
cialization, we can not advance. 

Special study and comprehensive views of 
history are not irreconcilable things. Every 
scientific investigator will not only know first 
hand the results obtained in his own part of the 
field, but he will know second hand the results 
obtained in other parts of the field. Speciali- 
zation can be dangerous only when the special- 
ist fails to keep in touch with the greater 
whole of which his work is only a part. 

If the student, supplied with the necessary 
knowledge of the auxiliary sciences, has been 
able, through the aid of bibliography, to find 
the sources that he seeks, his next step will be 
to decide how much of these sources can be ad- 
mitted as evidence on the subject under inves- 
tigation. To settle that question is the province 
of Criticism or Kritik. 



CHAPTER III. 



EXTERNAL CRITICISM; GENUINENESS OF THE 
SOURCE. 

BERNHEIM'S KRITIK, the second division 
of Method, covers practically the same 
_^round as Lanojlois, and Seignobos' Op- 
^rations analytiques. The subdivisions of the 
former are External Criticism, Internal Criti- 
cism, and Critical Arrangement of the Material; 
of the latter. External Criticism and Internal 
Criticism. 

External Criticism, Bernheim subdivides into: 
Testing the Genuineness, Localization of the 
Source, and Editing; Langlois and Seignobos, 
into Criticism of Restoration, Criticism of Ori- 
gin, Critical Classitication of the Sources, and 
Criticism of Erudition and the Erudites. 

The ground covered in both works is practi- 
cally the same, Bernheim being, of course, 
more technical and detailed, while Langlois and 
Seignobos, in their interesting chapter on "La 
critique d'erudition et les drudits," deal with a 
subject not treated by Bernheim, or, rather, 
treat it from a different point of view. 

In this chapter, I shall consider the first sub- 
division of External Criticism, the Testing of 
the Genuineness of the Source. 

The first question that the historian puts to 
the sources that he has brought together is 
*' Are they genuine? Or, subdividing the ques- 
tion, he asks, "Are they what they appear 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 27 

to be?" (forojery), and "Are they what I 
think they are?" (self-deception). In the first 
case, the trouble lies with the source; in the sec- 
ond case, with the historian. A lack of criti- 
cism in the first case would lead us to use material 
that should not be used; ii lack of criticism in 
the second case, or it may be hypercriticism, 
would cause us to reject material that should 
be used. The historian should guard against 
these two errors. 

Man is naturally credulous. It is much eas- 
ier to believe what we hear than to sift the evi- 
dence in order to find out the truth. This last 
process is so unnatural that few men will un- 
dertake it unless it is absolutely necessary. 
Criticism is often a thankless task, for its re- 
sults are frequently negative, forcing the his- 
torian to throw aside as worthless what he has 
gathered with so much difficulty. 

The critical attitude toward the sources has 
been a product of time. Although it has 
reached its fullest development in our day, there 
were historians among the Greeks whose atti- 
tude was in some respects strikingly modern. 
Speaking of the credulous spirit, Thucydides 
said (I., 20): "For men receive alike without 
examination from each other the reports of past 
events, even though they may have happened 
in their own country. * * •• With so little 
pains is the investigation of truth pursued by 
most men; and they rather turn to views al- 
ready formed." Referring to his own methods 
of investigation, he wrote (I., 22): " But with 
regard to the facts of what was done in this 



28 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

war, I do not presume to state them on hearsay 
from any chance informant, nor as I thoiiifht 
probable myself, but those at which I was per- 
sonally present, and, when informed by others, 
only after investijyating them accurately in 
every particular, as far as was possible." 

Many passao^es from the histories of Polyb- 
ius (1., 14; XII., 17-22) show that his attitude 
toward the sources was decidedly critical. 

But I recall nothing that would indicate that 
either of these writers carried their skepticism 
so far as to doubt the genuineness of the material 
that fell into their hands. They dealt more with 
what we call to-day Internal Criticism. Even 
here Thucydides Avas not consistent, but at- 
tempted to make a rational narrative out of the 
myths of the Iliad, gravely discussed the reasons 
for Agamenmon's leadership in the Trojan War, 
and knew the contents of the sealed letter sent 
by Pausanias to the Persian king, Xerxes. In 
a word, the critical method was not thoroughly 
conscious and scientific. 

The Greeks left us nothing in the writing of 
history but the work of Lucian, referred to in 
the precedhig chapter. The Romans did not 
accomplish as much as the Greeks, and the man 
of the Middle Ages was incapable of doing crit- 
ical work. With the Renaissance, the forward 
movement began again and from rational criti- 
cism the scholars of the f ollownig period passed 
rapidly to h3'percriticism. In the latter part of 
the seventeenth century, the Jesuit Harduin, dis- 
turbed by the large amount of forged material 
that he encountered, went so far as "to deny 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 29 

the entire foundation of our historical knowl- 
edo-e, and to reject as forged a long series of 
historical works and documents: Pindar, 
Thucydides, Dionysius, Diodorus, Strabo, Jo- 
sephus, Varro, Livy, Terence, Virgil, Horace, 
Eusebius, Cassiodorus, etc." 

A reaction naturally set in against this ex- 
treme view, leading to the present rational 
attitude of carefully testing all material and 
"holding fast that which is good." This is the 
Bolid foundation of External Criticism, upon 
which modern historical science is built. 

But it is not surprising that the man of the 
Renaissance were led into hypercriticism. The 
highways and byways of history are slrewn 
with forgeries. Every kind of source material 
can point to its famous examples. vSome of 
these cases are well known to others than the 
special student of history. 

A long lisi of forgeries could be made under 
the hojid of Kemains. This practice of fabricat- 
ing relics of the past and, for various reasons, 
passing them off as genuine has been continued 
down to our own day. Two of the most famous 
of th-ose perpetrated in the nineteenth century 
are described by Bernheim; the first was the 
]Moabi!e pottery, the second the Sardinian 
literature, or "Parchments of Arborea." 

After the discovery, in 1S66, of the Mesa 
stone with its invaluable inscription, in the land 
of Moab, there appeared for sale by a dealer in 
antiquities at Jerusalem certain old Hebrew in- 
scriptions similar to that on the Mesa stone. 
In the spring of the year 1872, there appeared 



30 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

at the same place certain pieces of pottery and 
later in the year vases, urns, etc., with inscrip- 
tions and drawings, 2,000 pieces in all. The 
articles were brought to Jerusalem by an Aralj, 
Selim, who had been in the employ of Euro- 
pean excavators. The dealer in Jerusalem was 
charged with fraud, and, in company with those 
interested, went to the place indicated by Selim 
and found other articles of the same nature. 
Although criticism was not silenced, many of 
the articles were bought, at the advice of Ger- 
man savants, for the Berlin Museum. Careful 
criticism has shown that the articles are counter- 
feits and that the work was probably done by 
the Arab Selim. 

The Sardinian forgery is even more interest- 
ing. In 1863-65, there was published in Italy 
a series of letters, biographies, poems, and 
other literary fragments, supposed to have 
been composed in the island of Sardinia in the 
period from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries. 
The original manuscripts were of parchment 
and paper. The find created a great sensation, 
for it was not known that such a state of culture 
had ever existed in Sardinia. The originals, 
after publication, w^ere deposited in the library 
at Cagliari. As a heated discussion had arisen in 
Italy over the genuineness of the material, some 
of the originals were submitted to the Academy 
of Sciences at Berlin for criticism. Jaffe in- 
vestigated the material of the manuscripts and 
the handwriting; Tobler, the language and 
literature; Dove, the historical contents. They 
established, beyond the possibility of a doubt, 
that the material was forged. 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 31 

The Forged Decretals, the Gift of Constan 
tine, the poems of Ossian and Chatter ton are 
forgeries known to every school boy. 

Marie Antoinette suffered much at the hands 
of the forger. The historian of the French 
Revolution who attempts to write the life of 
*^^his unfortunate woman is confronted at the 
very thres-hold of his work with the question, 
" How many of the letters attributed to her were 
really written by her? " The famous collections 
of her letters by Feuillet de Conches and Count 
d' Hunolstein contain a great mass of forgeries. 
A glance at the introduction to the first volume 
of the collection by La Rocheterie and DeBeau- 
court (Paris, 1895) w^ill give some idea of 
what a Herculean labor the determination of 
the genuineness of the material may become. 

In 1895 a work entitled, ''The Journal of a 
Spy in Paris during the Reign of Terror," pur- 
porting to have been written in 1791 by one 
Raoul Hesdin, was printed in London by the 
reputable firm of John Murray. The editor 
did not give his name, did not state where the 
manuscript was found, nor where it could be 
seen by the skeptical. 

The wx)rk received little attention on this side of 
the Atlantic. The American Historical Review 
(July, 1896) remarked that "the unsatisfactory 
point about The Journal is that no evidence is 
given of its authenticity," but no attempt was 
made to prove by a study of its contents that 
the work was a forgery. This was successfully 
undertaken by the English Historical Review in 
the July number of 1S96. It is a good example 



•yl HISrORICAL METHOD 

for the .student nf history to study. The work 
"was shown to be a forgery. 

This case is the more interesting as the anon- 
ymous editor attempted to defend himself by 
anonymous letters written to the Athenaeum. 
Although the work is a forgery, it is a clever 
forgery, and it would be well worth the while 
of the historical student to give it some study. 
The absence of the manuscript rendered, of 
course, the work of detection much more diffi- 
cult than it otherwise would have been. 

The question of the authenticity of the so- 
called ''Casket Letters'' of Mary Queen of 
Scots is still an unsettled question. The ap- 
pearance of the M^moires of Talleyrand a few 
years ago raised a discussion upon their 
genuineness that lasted for more than a year. 
The manuscript of Talleyrand was not to be 
found; it had probably been destroyed. The 
existing manuscript was a copy made by Ba- 
court. This gentleman had formerly edited 
the correspondence between Mirabeau and De 
Lamarck, and had taken great liberties with it. 
This rendered the critics suspicious, and they 
were naturally desirous to know why the origi- 
nal manuscript had been destroyed and how 
much of the M6moires was the work of Talley- 
rand and how much the work of Bacourt. 
They will probably never know. 

In 1897, the English Historical Review and 
the German Historische Zeitschrift contained 
interesting critical articles on a series of secret 
reports on the French Revolution published in 
the Dropmore Papers. 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 33 

The M^moires de Weber on the French 
Revolution is largely the work of Lolly-ToUen- 
dal, and it is claimed that the Comte de Segur 
wrote the Memoires de Besenval. And so the 
list miofht be continued indefinitely. Besides 
the injury done by treating forged material as 
if it were genuine, as great an injury may be 
done by treating genuine material as if it were 
forged. Bernheim gives a number of inter- 
esting illustrations of this kind of error. The 
mistake is due to ignorance. During the first 
half of this century, quite a number of mediae- 
val sources were set aside as forgeries, but 
have since been recognized as genuine. 

Enough has been written, I take it, to make 
clear the necessity of testing the genuineness of 
sources before using them. It is now in order 
to say a word about how this is done. 

Apart from the genius that characterizes the 
most successful criticism, the indespensable 
preparation for this work is the acquisition of 
a fund of detailed knowledge concerning the 
source material of the period in which the for- 
gery is supposed to have originated. Such a fund 
is not the property of the novice, and only the 
veteran knows how diflicult of acquisition it 
is, how much time and patience and skill are ex- 
pended in securing it. 

The investigation of the genuineness of a 
source is little more than a series of compari- 
sons systematically conducted. The suspected 
source forms a part of the remains that have 
come down to us from some previous age. If 
it be genuine it will be in harmony with all the 



34 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

other sources of that period and bear the marks 
common to all the culture products of that aofe. 
A simple statement of this fact will make 
clear that as difficult as it may be to de'ect a 
forgery, it is even more difficult for a fortifery 
to escape detection if the critic possesses an 
adequate knowledge of the period concerned. 

The critic deals first with the form of the 
document, with the writing, language, style, 
and composition. Palaeography and philology 
have obtained such a development that he 
would indeed be the prince of forgers who 
could successfully imitate the language and 
writing of past ages and deceive the critics. To 
reproduce successfully the style of a certain 
man of a certain age, would be even more diffi- 
cult were it not for the fact that this part of 
criticism has been but little developed. The 
success of this sort of thing is due to the ignor- 
ance of the critic rather than to the skill of the 
forger. A growth of knowledge and of method 
will reverse these relations. 

After dealing with the form of the source, 
the critic turns to the contents. (1) Do they 
agree with what we have learned from other 
genuine sources of the same age and place? (2) 
Is the writer ignorant of things that a writer of 
that day would have mentioned ? (3) Is he ac- 
quainted with events of which he jcspuld not 
have known at the date of writing? Oiil;hese 
three questions, the second is the most difficult 
to answer. If a forger passed unscathed the 
ordeal of one and three, it would be rather dif- 
ficult to convict him under two. It is the so- 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 35 

called argument from silence, and is often used 
in a most unscientific manner. It is almost im- 
possible for a forger to escape the test of three. 
Every man is a child of his own time, and it is 
practically impossible, in dealing with an ear- 
lier period, to conceal his personality. It was 
through his knowledge of later events that the 
forger of " The Journal of a Spy" fell a victim 
to the critics. 

If the source passes the tests of outward form 
and of content, the critic then asks if the in- 
formation drawn from the source fits naturally 
into the chain of historical evolution as we 
know it. A successful answer to this ques- 
tion can be given, of course, only by a master 
of the period. 

Besides these main tests, there are others that 
may not be decisive in themselves, but that sup- 
ply us with cumulative evidence. Such tests are 
found in the peculiar conditions under which the 
source was discovered, the use, by the forger, of 
documents or other records that could not hava 
been known to him at the time when the record 
was supposed to have been made, and the de- 
tection of certain prejudices in the source that 
might explain the object of the forgery. 

From what has been said, it ought to be clear 
that clever cases of forgery can be detected only 
by experienced critics. 

If the source material stands the test and is 
clearly genuine, the historian takes the next 
step in External Criticism by attempting to 
localize the source, that is, to tell when the ac- 
count was written, where it was written, and 
who the author was. 



CHAPTER IV. 



EXTERNAL CRITICISM: LOCALIZATION OF THE 
SOURCE. 

HAVING decided that the material is gen- 
uine, the historian has to deal with the 
further question, "Shall it be admitted 
as evidence? " A reply to this question is pos- 
sible only when tlie material has been localized. 
Kow sources are the results of human activity, 
either destined originally to serve as proofs of 
historical events or fitted to serve as such proof 
because of their origin and existence. The 
first class of sources constitutes tradition; the 
second the historian styles remains. If, then, 
the events are to be restored by means of the 
remains and tra'litions, it is perfectly clear that 
the historian must know with certainty to what 
events the remains belong, and that the tradi- 
tions actually come down to us from individ- 
uals who were themselves participants in the 
events or at least eye-witnesses. "It would be 
absurd to seek information upon an event in the 
writings of one who knew nothing about it and 
w^as not able to know anything about it." The 
historian must know, then, when the source 
originated, where it originated, and who the au- 
thor was. " A document whose author, date, 
and place of origin are totally unknowable is 
good for nothing." When these questions have 
been answered, the source has been localized, 
and the historian knows whether it may be ad- 
mitted as evidence or not. The further ques- 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 37 

tion as to what this evidence is worth is dealt 
with by Internal Criticism. 

It is evident that the work of localizing the 
source is closely connected with that of deter- 
mining its genuineness. A source might claim 
to be the w-ork of a Frenchman, living in Paris 
in the year 1794; in proving it to be a forgery, 
we show that it is the work of an Englishman, 
living in London, in the year 1895. It is the 
object of the investigation that marks the differ- 
ence between the two processes. In the first, 
we wish to know if we are dealing with a genu- 
ine document; in the second, if the document, 
through its origin, could contain the evidence 
that we seek. A false document, claiming to 
contain evidence, would, when localized, be of 
no value; a genuine, but unlocalized, source, 
might, when localized, prove to be of no value 
for our investigation. 

If the document is genuine, and the name of 
the author, the time and place of writing are all 
given, there is no need of an investigation. A 
distinction should, how'ever, be made between 
the time of writing, and the time of printing; 
the place of writing and the place of printing, 
the author of the title page and the real author. 
If these two sets of facts always agreed, the 
work of investigation would be rendered much 
easier. Setting aside, for the present, these 
latter problems, let us consider the more diffi- 
cult ones; how is the origin of a source — written 
tradition, for example— ascertained when there 
is no title page indicating the author and the 
time and place of writing? 



38 HISTORICAL METHOD, 

The determination of the date of a source is 
often a very difficult matter. It is especially 
difficult when it must be determined by the con- 
tents of the document controlled by general 
information. In the first place, we endeavor to 
locate the source in a general way by a study of 
form, language, style, and contents. In this 
way, we place it in a certain century or even 
generation. Here palaeography and philology 
are of use to us. If our source is in the form 
of a manuscript, palaeograph}' tells us it was 
written in such or such a century. Even the 
school-boy knows how writing changes from 
generation to generation. Men of thirty-five, 
living to-day, have had experience of three gen- 
erations of penmanship; the style of their fath- 
ers, the so-called Spencerian style, and the 
lately introduced upright style. Modifications 
of a similar nature characterize the whole his- 
tory of writing; a knowledge of this history 
enables the palaeographists to locate the manu- 
script approximately. 

The history of language lends its aid, and this 
may be employed with printed sources. Words 
and expressions are born and die. The philol- 
ogist tells us that a certain word appeared for 
the first time in a language in a certain century. 
If the word appears in the given source, it must 
have been written after that century. He tells 
us, also, that a certain word disappeared from 
a certain language in a given century. If the 
word appears in the source, the record must 
have been made before the disappearance of the 
word. 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 39 

But often neither palaeography nor philoloo^y, 
nor even style can do more than locate tho 
source in the first or second half of a century. 
How can the date be fixed more definitely ? 

Here we must depend largely upon the con- 
tents of the source. References to events, 
known to us from other sources, prove that the 
record was made after the events took place or 
that it arose at the time of the events. That is 
shown by the manner in which the events are 
referred to. Writing upon the events of July, 
1TS9, Bailly said, "If M. Barrere had been lis- 
tened to, many things accomplished by time and 
accident would not have happened, the revolu- 
tion would have been less complete; but we 
should have been saved from the anarchy to 
which the constitution has been exposed and is 
Btill exposed (Today, 23d of February, 1792)." 
Although the work is printed in the form of a 
diary, kept from day to day in 17S9, it is evi- 
dent, from remarks like the above, that it was 
written several years later. 

Brissot's M^moires offer an excellent oppor- 
tunity for a study upon the date of writing. 
Even in the first volume, dealing with his early 
life, there are repeated references to events 
that took place in the last years of his life. On 
one page he refers to "my pamphlet of the 
month of October, written against the factions 
of Marat and Robespierre," and to "the 
choices made by the sections of Paris for the 
National Convention." 

So every record made by an eye-witness, but 
made some time after the events, is likely to 



40 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

supply some such clue, as the above, to the 
date of writing. The use of such expressions 
as "up to the present time," "at the date of 
writing," or references to the results of certain 
acts that are being described, are helpful to the 
historian. 

The failure to mention events that the wit- 
ness undoubtedly would have mentioned had he 
known of them is also helpful. This is the so- 
called argument from silence. There are great 
dangers connected with its use. The reasoning 
is, " Because the witness does not mention this 
event, the event never took place." For this 
reasoning to be valid, it is clear that all of the 
events must have been recorded and the records 
preserved. If the witness did not record all 
the facts, or if any of the records have been 
lost, the reasoning would be false. It would 
seem to be evident, then, that this argument 
can be employed only in certain clearly delined 
cases, namely, when (1) the " witness desired to 
note systematically all the facts of a certain 
kind and was acquainted with them all; and (2) 
when the fact, if it had existed, would have 
made such an impression upon the mind of the 
witness that he would have been forced to re- 
cord it." 

Sometimes a single reference is suflScient to 
fix the date; often the procedure is more diffi- 
cult, and the historian must determine the 
limits within which the record was made. The 
one limit is called the terminus post quem^ or 
the limit after which the source must have 
originated: the other limit is the terminus ante 



HISTORICAL METHOD. ^1 

queni^ or the date before which the record 
must have been made. The following excel- 
lent illustration is given by Bernheim of the 
search for these two limits: One of the annals 
describing the period of Charlemagne and his 
predecessors, and written contemporaneously, 
treats the years from 741-791. It is seen at 
once that it was not written year by year, l)e- 
cause frequent references are made to later 
events. Assuming that they were not put in at 
a later date, we may make use of them to tix the 
terminxLS post quern. The latest event men- 
tioned that may be used in this way happened 
in the year 1781. In speaking of the Duke of 
Bavaria,Tassilo, who had been conquered and had 
promised submission, the annalist writes, "But 
the promises that he had made he did not keep 
long (Sed non diu promissiones quas fecerat 
conservavit). It is evident the writer knew 
of the subsequent revolt of Tassilo in 1788 
This is the terminus post quern. 

There is but one reference that gives assist- 
ance in establishing the terminus ante quein. 
In 785 the annalist writes: "And then all 
Saxony was subdued " (et tunc tota Saxonia 
subjugata est). He would hardly have writ- 
ten like this had he known of the breaking 
away of all Saxony from the rule of Charle- 
magne in 793. This, then, is the terminus ante 
quern. The work was written, if this reason- 
ing be sound, between 788 and 793. 

The determination of the place of origin is 
often more difficult than the fixing of the date 
of a source. The place where the record was 



42 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

found, and the imprint, maj or may not help ua 
in the investi<^ation. A manuscript written on 
the island of St. Helena may be discovered in 
the United States, and the place given on the 
title page may have been intended to mislead 
the censor, when a censorship of the press ex- 
isted. In dealing with French works printed 
before the Revolution, it is never safe to accept 
without investigation the place of publication 
given on the title page. The writing, if it be a 
manuscript, or the language may aid us, in 
case that we have the original language. 

The subject matter furnishes the most valua- 
ble evidence. How this material may be used 
will be best shown by another example from 
Bernheim. In the early part of this century, 
there was discovered in the monastery of St 
Michael at Liineburg a few sheets of parch- 
ment manuscript containing annals for the 
years 1057-1130. iSleither the name of the 
author, nor time and place of writing, were 
given. The part from 1100 on was clearly the 
work of a contemporary. Where was it writ- 
ten ? The handwriting was of the twelfth cen- 
tury, but showed no local characteristics. The 
same was true of the language, that was the 
Latin of the twelfth century. The place of 
discovery might point to Lower Saxony as the 
place of origin, bat not without further proof. 

An examination of the contents showed that 
the part from 1100 on bore the stamp of 
unity. Saxon events are treated in great de- 
tail, while events taking place in the rest of 
Germany, even when important, are simply 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 43 

mentioned or not referred to at all. Changes 
in the bishops of different bishopries occupy 
much space, and the writer is especially inter- 
ested in the bishoprics of Magdeburg, Bremen, 
Halberstadt, and Merseburg (Saxon bishop- 
rics). The most of the princes, whose deaths 
are mentioned, are Saxon, and the writer as- 
sumes that when he refers simplv to the 
"Markgraf Rudolf" or the "Graf Friedrich," 
the reader will understand him. 

The deaths in the f imily of the Count of 
Stade are given regularly, and the writer as- 
sumes that his readers are acquainted with 
even these relatively unimportant lords. ' ' Udo 
comes" (Count Udo) is the regular form of 
reference. So great is the interest in this 
family that in the midst of the account of the 
struggle between Henry IV. and his sons, the 
annalist breaks off his narrative to note that 
'"Count Linderus, .with the surname of Udo, 
was taken sick, was brought to the cloister of 
Rosenfeld, and died there." The mention of 
this cloister in connection with the Count of 
Stade is an important clue. Investigation 
shows that the cloister of Rosenfeld is lo- 
cated in the land of the Count of Stade, that 
it was founded by the Counts of Stade. Who, 
then, would be so much interested in the 
Counts of Stade as a monk in the cloister of 
Rosenfeld, and who wrote his annals for the 
circle of readers about him? And a notice 
from the year 113C> points unmistakably to the 
cloister of Rosenfeld as the place where the 
annals originated. " Cono abbas obiit" (the 



44 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

abbot Kuno died) runs the record. Only in 
the monastery where the annals were written 
could a reference like that— a reference that did 
not orive name of the monastery over which 
Kuno presided— be understood. From other 
sources, we learn that Kuno was the abbot at 
the head of the cloister until 1130. This was 
clearly the place where the annals were 
written. 

The determination of the authorship of a 
source is of the greatest importance, Not that 
we may simply know the name of the author, 
do we seek this information, but that we may 
know what kind of a person he is and what his 
position in society is. Only in this way can we 
determine what his testimony is worth. This 
information might be made use of even when 
we did not know the writer's name. 

The most common means of determining the 
authorship of a source is to compare it with 
other sources. Here the knowledge of time 
and place of origin is of value, as it enables us 
to limit the body of sources with which we 
work. 

If we have a manuscript and know it is gen- 
uine, we may compare it with other manu- 
scripts of the same period. In modern history, 
where distinguished men have left large quan- 
tities of manuscript material behind them, their 
hand-writing is well known, and it is easy to 
locate a newly discovered manuscript. In the 
Middle Ages, the work is more difficult, for 
there is less individuality in the hand- writing 
and less material for comparison. 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 45 

To determine the authorship of a source by 
a comparison of its style with that of other con- 
temporary works is a diiScult undertaking. 
All the world is acquainted with the attempt to 
prove in this way that "Bacon wrote Shake- 
speare's plays. But this sort of thing is gener- 
ally unscientific in two w'ays. In the first place, 
the investigators forget that all the writers of 
a given generation will have much in common, 
and when we prove that an anonymous work 
has, in the matter of style, much in common 
with the work of a known writer, it may he 
possible to establish further that these common 
things are found in the works of all other writers 
of that period. In the second place, the inves- 
tigators have lost sight of the fact that an au- 
thors style changes; it changes as he grows 
older, as he treats different subjects, as he ad- 
dresses different classes of readers. Much time 
has V)een wasted in purposeless work of this 
kind, and although some progress has been 
made, this part of method is in a very unsatis- 
factory condition. 

It often happens, when handwriting and 
style fail to give definite results, that the au- 
thorship may be settled in other ways. Fre- 
quently references made by the writer to him- 
self, to his interests, occupations, position in 
life, and persons with whom he is associated 
point clearly to some known persons whose sur- 
roundings correspond to those indicated in the 
sources. Such a piece of work could, of course, 
be successfully carried out only by a historian 
possessing a large fund of information oa the 



46 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

period of histoiy to which the source belonged. 

Sometimes we are aided in determining the 
authorship of a work by references to it in 
other works, where the reference is coupled 
with the author's name. At times these works 
give exact quotations that are found literally in 
the anonymous work. 

As was pointed out above, the important 
thing in the determination of the authorship of 
a source is not simply to learn the author's 
name, but the author's personality. To know 
that the writer of a certain source was an un- 
known A or B, and to know nothing else, would 
profit us little. If the source furnishes us 
abundant information upon the personality of 
the writer, it is of no value to know his name, 
unless the person be well known, and a knowl- 
edge of this name will enable us to obtain else- 
where further information about him. 

An example from Bernheim will illustrate 
the methods by which the authorship of anony- 
mous sources may be determined. 

One of the most important sources for the 
close of the ninth century in Germany is the 
chronicle of Regino, the Abbott of Priim. 
This is continued from 907-967 by an unknown 
writer. He evidently worked in the sixties, 
making use, at first, of other annals and, later, 
writing more independently and treating the 
subject more in detail. From the interest that 
he betrays for the cloister of St. Maximin at 
Trier, it is evident that he belongs to this 
cloister; the events enumerated are such as 
only a resident would be likely to take note of. 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 47 

Now the resident of a cloister engaged in literary- 
work, could have been none other than a monk. 
This tirst inference gains support from the fact 
that the first part of the chronicle was written 
in St. Maximiu where Rogino took refuge after 
being expelled from Priim. 

Among the few persons of the cloister named 
by the writer of the chronicle, one, Adalbert 
by name, is especially prominent. In 961 it is 
stated, that at the instigation of the Arch- 
bishop of Mainz, "of whom Adalbert might 
have expected something better," the monk was 
sent as a wandering preacher to Russia. He 
was fitted out for the journey by the king. In 
962, he returned from his bootless mission, 
passing through great dangers and receiving a 
most hearty welcome at home. The writer is 
so well informed upon the adventures of Adal- 
bert and speaks of them with so much feeling 
that he must have been on intimate terms with 
him, or he must have been Adalbert himself. 
For this last presumption there is considerable 
evidence drawn from what we know about Adal- 
bert from other sources. In 966, he was made 
Abbot at Weissenburg, and in 968 became Arch- 
bishop of Magdeburg. From his career, it is 
evident that he was an educated man. The 
writer of the chronicle shows by his language 
and the character of his narrative that he pos- 
sessed a culture not common in that day. The 
chronicle mentions the transfer of Adalbert to 
Weissenburg and breaks off with the year 968, 
the year when he was raised to the archbishopric. 
It may be said, then, "with the greatest prob- 



48 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

ability, if not with certainty, tliat Adalbert 
was the writer of the continuation of Regino's 
chronicle." 

Such are the problems to be solved in the lo- 
calization of a source, and such are some of the 
methods of solving them. 



CHAPTER V. 



EXTERNAL, CRITICISM: ANALYSIS OF THE SOURCE 
AND RESTORATION OF THE TEXT. 

THE work of External Criticism is not com- 
pleted when the source has been shown to 
be genuine and has been localize I. It 
still remains for the student of history to ana- 
lyze his sources and, in some cases, even to en- 
deavor to restore the printed or written text, 
corrupted by copyists. 

The need of text anal3'sis is self-evident. In 
the first place, all of the events recorded by a 
witness have not, as a rule, been directly ob- 
served by him. Not all parts of his record are 
equally valuable and the first-hand evidence 
can be separated from the derived only by anal- 
ysis. In the second place, as we shall see later, 
historical facts are established by the agree- 
ment among independent witnesses. It is of 
the first importance, then, that the independ- 
ence of the witnesses should be established, and 
this is done by studying the relation of one 
source to another. I shall consider, then, (1) 
the analysis of a single source; and (2) the an- 
alysis of the relationship existing among sev- 
eral sources. 

Failure to analj^ze their sources and to dis- 
tinguish between what the witness knows first 
hand and what he has derived from others is 
one of the characteristics of the uncritical his- 
torian. Having decided that the work as a whole 



50 HISTORIC AL METHOD. 

is genuine, and that it was written by a s;on- 
temporary who lived in the midst of the event/? 
described, the oreneral inference is made that 
all the evidence contained in the record must be 
source material. This is, of course, as a rule, a 
false inference, but it is surprising how long it 
has taken historical science to get beyond it. 

Thucydides wrote the history of the Pelo- 
ponnesian war. The work is preceded by an in- 
troduction in which he deals with the history of 
Greece up to his own day. It is self-evident 
that Thucydides could have Avitnessed but a small 
I)art of the events that he recorded; for the 
events of his own day, he obtained his informa- 
tion largely from eye witnesses, while for the 
past he was dependent upon written and oral 
tradition. It is necessary (1) to analyze the 
work and, if possible, to separate Thucydides' 
personal knowledge from his information de- 
rived from other sources; and (2) to learn, if 
possible, what the other sources were. 

Neither of these operations can be success- 
fully carried out. For although Thucydides, 
in referring to his methods of work, states (I., 
22) that he gave "the facts of what was done 

in the war only after investigating them 

accurately in every particular, as far as possi- 
ble," he seldom, if ever, gives his source of in- 
formation. The necessity of proof was not 
realized in his dsiy.- Incidentally he tells us 
that he suffered from the plague (II., 48 ), com- 
manded in Thrace (IV., 104) and was exiled 
(V., 26); but these statements are notmade for 
the purpose of showing us where he obtained 
his information. 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 51 

It ought to be clear by this time that the fact 
that Thucydides wrote the "History of the 
Peloponnesian War " does not justify the his- 
torian in accepting the whole work as the result 
of his observations. It is evidently composed 
of material of unequal value. How unsci- 
entifically much of the work has been done in 
the past will be realized when it is stated that 
the question as to whether the Boeotians mi- 
grated from Thessaly to Boeotia in early times 
has been often settled in the past by a quota- 
tion from Thucydides (I., 12). When it is 
remembered that if there ever was such a 
migration, it must have taken place several 
hundred years before his day and that the 
event must have been without a written record 
for many generations, it will be easy to com- 
prehend the desperate straits in which the his- 
torian finds himself who cites Thucydides on 
such a point and really believes that he has 
proved anything by the citation. 

A vast amount of time and labor have been 
expended on the analysis of the Greek and Ro- 
man historians. After a careful examination 
of all the attempts to analyze the sources of 
Roman history. Dr. Carl Peter (Zur Kritik der 
Quellen der alteren Romischen Geschichte, 
Halle, 1879) concludes that, for the most part, 
such work can lead to nothing definite (page 
166). The same remark would apply to the 
larger part of the written traditions on the his- 
tory of Greece. Some of the possibilities, 
however, are shown in Kirehhoff's " Thuky 
dides und sein Urkundenmaterial, Berlin 



52 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

1895," especially in the study of the truce be- 
tween Athens and Sparta (IV., 118, 119). 
What our sources are for early Roman history 
m&j be learned from Pelham (Outlines of Ro- 
man History, N. Y., 1893, page 3), namely, the 
tradition as established in the time of Livy 
and Dionysius (about first century, B. C). 
Under these circumstances, one would be justi- 
fied in saying that we know practically noth- 
ing about the first few centuries of Roman his- 
tory. It is source analysis that has led to these 
results. They are negative, it is true, but the 
acceptance of negative results in the place of 
unscientific and impossible constructions repre- 
sents a distinct step in advance. 

" Most historians," says Seignobos, " refrain 
from rejecting a legend till its falsity has been 
proved, and if by chance no document has been 
preserved to contradict it, they adopt it pro- 
visionally. This is how the first five centuries 
of Rome are dealt with. This method, unfor 
tunately still too general, helps to prevent his- 
tory from being established as a science." 

But more satisfactory results are obtained in 
the study of periods nearer our own time. 
The period of the French Revolution is a verita- 
ble TumTnelplatz for untrained historians. No- 
where does the neglect of source analysis lead 
to more disastrous results. For the events of 
1789 the Moniteur and the Archi/ces parlemen- 
taires are commonly referred to as sources. 
There are copies of the Moniteur dealing with 
the events from May 5, 1789, but the publica- 
tion of the paper did not begin until Novem- 



HISTOKICAL METHOD. 53 

ber of that year. Several years later the 
desire to make the file complete for the revolu- 
tion led the editors to publish the back num- 
bers from May 5 until the real publication 
began. This port'on of the paper can, in no 
sense, be called a source; it is a second-hand 
compilation. An analysis of the material con- 
tained in it shows that other newspapers (Mira- 
beau's Courrier de Provence)^ m^moires (Bailly), 
and contemporary histories {Histoire de la 
revolution yar deux amis de la liberty) were 
made use of it. Ranke has an interesting 
study on the Moniteur in his "Revolution- 
skriege." He there points out that the compi- 
lation for the year 1789 is composed of two 
parts; the second part, dealing with the events 
happening outside the Assembly, is taken al- 
most bodily from the history by "Two Friends 
of Liberty," referred to above. It is clear, 
then, that, instead of using the Momteui\ we 
should go back to the source used by the com- 
pilers of the Moniteur. Even here the need of 
source analysis will still be felt, for Flammer- 
mont tells us, in his work, '''La jour nee du iJf, 
juillet, 1789, Paris, 1892," that ifor this great 
event the work has "no original value." The 
authors utilized the most of the accounts by 
eye witnesses that had been published when 
they composed their history, but as we have 
the same works at our disposal we pass on to 
them, and begin anew the task of analysis. 
This one example ought to be sufficient to 
establish the necessity of source analysis. 
The state of the Archives parlementaires is 



54 HISTORICAL, METHOD. 

even worse than that of the Moniteur. The 
portion of the work devoted to 1789 was com- 
piled about thirty years ago and the chief 
source was the Moniteur! The work was done 
at the expense of the French oroverninent. It 
is now being done over again by M. Brette. 
That is a good example of the loss of time and 
money resulting from unscientific work. More 
than that, the work has been often read by 
those who did not know its character and the 
generalizations based upon it are often un- 
sound. A good criticism is found in Brette, 
" Z<?s ConstitaianteSj Paris, 1897," page 33. 

While examining a letter written byMirabeau 
in 1788 to a friend in Germany, I was struck 
by the familiar appearance of a large part of 
it, but was unable to explain it. .Shortly after 
that, 1 had occasion to make use of a pam- 
phlet written in 1788 — one that I had already 
examined — and I found the solution of the 
problem. Mirabeau had copied whole para- 
graphs from this work and sent them out as 
his own. This was one of Mirabeau's great 
failings, and, if we accepted without reserve 
the opinions of some of the men that co-oper- 
ated with him, we should believe that all his 
plumage was borrowed. Source analysis is no 
easy task, but it is clearly indispensable. 

I have dealt thus with the analysis of the sin- 
gle source and the attempt to determine its 
composition; I shall now consider the relation- 
ship among sources. The importance of this 
investigation has already been pointed out; it is 
the indispensable foundation for historical cer- 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 55 

tainty. -The testimony of two or more eye wit- 
nesses is sufficient to establish a fact, but on the 
condition that the witnesses are independent of 
each other. The failure to meet this condition 
is a common occurrence. Students appear to 
think that a fact is established by the number 
of references in support of it, the question of 
independence being entirely overlooked. They 
do not stop to consider the fact that if five ref- 
erences to an event are found and four of these 
five draw their information from the fifth, it is 
sufficient to give the one reference; it does not 
strengthen the case to add the remaining four 
references. Certain events happening on the 
14th of July, 1789, are reported in the 3fo7iitew\ 
in the history by " Deux amis de la liherte^'' and 
in the " Proces-verlxd " of the city government of 
Paris. A careless investigator would think that 
he had three independent witnesses. We know 
that he has but one, the " Proces-verhaiy 

When we have before us two or three records 
dealing with the same events, how is their re- 
lationship determined? The question is often 
settled by the localization of the sources. From 
this process we may learn that onl}^ one could 
have had direct knowledge of the event; the 
others have only indirect information. When 
the question can not be settled thus readily, it 
is necessary to compare the differ ents texts. 
The procedure rests on two pyschological ax- 
ioms: (1) whjfn two individuals perceive the 
same event tlrey neither seize upon the same 
details noi^eport them in the same way; (2) 
when t\^HDdividuals give expression to inde- 



56 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

pendent conceptions, they never make use of 
exactly the same form. From these axioms, we 
draw the inference that if two or more sources 
report the same facts in the same or nearly the 
same form, these accounts have not been inde- 
pendently conceived. This axiom dealing with 
expression does not, of course, include those 
fixed forms, found in every language, represent- 
ing neither independent thought-conception nor 
thought-expression. 

Even when the language is different, if the 
details are complex, and their arrangement the 
same, it is sufficient to establish dependence. 
But if the event is a simple one, it might not 
be possible to estalilish the relationship be- 
tween the sources when similarity in expres- 
sion is lacking. 

In considering the relationship of two sources 
known to be related, the problem may be 
solved in various ways. If we find in one 
source a misunderstanding of an expression 
correctly used in the other, then the last is 
clearly the original. When the style of one 
source is flowing, smooth, and well arrangedj 
while that of the other is awkward, discon- 
nected, and poorly arranged, the latter is 
clearly the original. When the two sources 
are the work of writers with different preju- 
dices and party affiliations, the attempt to ar- 
range and modify the facts taken from one 
source to make them harmonize with the point 
of view in the other often betrays the copyist. 
Additions and omissions frequently furnish the 



HISTORICAL. METHOD. 57 

most satisfactory material for the study of 
relationship. 

When three or more sources must be ana- 
lyzed the problems become more complex. 
Here two of the sources may have drawn from the 
third or one may havedrawn from the othertwo. 

In the first case, we should have possible 

combinations like these: 

A A A 

• I I 

B C 

I I 

B/ \C C B 

In the second case the combination would be: 

Y Z 





X . 

There is no space here, were it desirable, 
to work out these combinations and show 
how the problems are solved. It is suffi- 
cient to know that they do arise, that they 
must be solved, and that specialists develop a 
marvelous skill in solving them. 

The analysis of the sources not only en- 
ables the historian to determine the relation- 
ship between sources, but even to restore lost 
sources. The Germans have furnished some 
remarkable examples of this kind of work. 
Giesebrecht, in studying certain mediaeval 
chronicles, discovered that they had all copied 
from a lost chronicle of the eleventh century. 
Gathering up the extracts embedded in theso 



68 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

later works, he restored the lost source. In 
1867, the lost annals were discovered, and it was 
found that the main results of Giesebrecht's 
work were correct. Scheffer-Boichorst's res- 
toration of the Amiales Patherhrunnenses is 
another remarkable example. 

When the source is known to be genuine, has 
been localized and analyzed, it only remains to 
restore the original text of the document, and 
to prepare it for pul)lication, if it be a manu- 
script. This completes the work of External 
Criticism. 

The necessity of a carefully restored text is 
Belf-evident in the case of classical and mediaeval 
manuscripts; it is not so evident for later doc- 
uments. And yet the fairly attentive newspa- 
per reader sees every day corrupt texts, that 
is, printed pages that have not faithfully re- 
produced the written page. When he attempts 
to correct the text by putting the misplaced 
words or lines in their proper places, to substi- 
tute a word that makes sense for one that makes 
nonsense, he is doing on a small scale, and in a 
simple way, what the text restorer does on a 
large scale and in a more complex way. 

How unreliable some of the texts are that are 
based on old manuscripts, only the investigator 
can fully appreciate. A rapid examination of 
the foot-notes in the Bohn translation of Thucy- 
dides, coupled with an observation of the ques- 
tionable passages — possibly later additions — en- 
closed in brackets in the text, will give 
Eome idea of the uncertainty of the results 
attained. 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 59 

The explanation of all this is not hard to tind. 
The originals of these old manuscripts — espe- 
cially Greek and Latin — have been lost. The 
manuscripts that we possess are only copies of 
copies, and sometimes worse. The great mass 
of the classical manuscripts are not older than 
the fifteenth century. 

What possibilities of error lay in this re- 
peated cckpying! True even for intelligent 
copyists, this becomes doubly true of the igno- 
rant workmen employed — under competent di- 
rection, it is true — at the close of the Middle 
Ages. Hear what a contemporary says of 
these corrupt texts (Von.Reumont: Lorenzo de 
Medici, London, 1876, L, page 436): "lean 
not express," says the Florentine chancellor 
once, " how repulsive the universal corruption 
that has crept into books is to me. We scarcely 
find one manuscript of Petraca's and Boccaccio's 
works which does not deviate from the original. 
They are not texts, but coarse caricatures of 
texts. . . In Dante's book this calamity is 
the greatest, as the uninitiated are often unable 
to follow those who are at all acquainted with 
the poet." 

The restoration of a text can be done success- 
fully only by a trained specialist. It calls for 
a great mass of technical knowledge and long 
years of practice. 

Langlois divides the possible problems in 
text restoration into three classes: (1) Where 
the original exists, (2) where but a single copy 
exists, and (3) where several copies exist. 

In the first case the process is comparatively 



60 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

simple. The correctness of the printed text is 
determined by comparing it with the manu- 
script. It is surprising how often the most 
careful scholars make some slight mistakes in 
copying. I had occasion to collate a letter pub- 
lished in the work of a distinguished historian 
with the original in the archives at Paris. The 
letter had, presumably, been reproduced liter- 
ally for the purpose of showing the lack of cul- 
ture in the writer. The document was a mere 
note, and occupied only thirteen lines in the 
printed text. I found that the copyist had 
made eighteen (18) errors! 

Langlois gives an example of one remark- 
able restoration where the original was missing 
and the investigator was obliged to work with a 
single copy; the text was the Letters of Seneca; 
the restorer, Madvig. The passage was "Pliil- 
osophia unde dicta sit, apparet, ipso enim nom- 
ine fatetur. Quidam et sapientiam ita qui- 
dam tinier unt, etc." This did not make sense. 
Madvig knew, from his study of palaeography, 
that the original was written in capitals, with 
nothing to indicate the separation of words or 
sentences, thus: FATETURQUIDAMETSAP- 
lENTIAM. Putting the lines into capitals, he 
quickly discovered the true reading. It was: 
"ipso enim nomine fatetur quid amet. Sapientiam 
ita quidam finicrunt." There have been many 
other remarkable restorations from single 
copies. 

In the third case, where more than one copy 
exists, it is necessary, iirst of all, to study the 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 61 

relationship of the copies, to learn, if possible, 
how many are independent. Having learned 
this, by a comparison -of the independent texts, 
an effort is made to remove the errors that have 
crept in and to obtain, if possible, a better text 
than is found in any one of the manuscripts. 

When the original text is restored, the work 
of External Criticism is finished and we are ready 
for Internal Criticism. In other words, we 
have decided what material shall be admitted as 
evidence; it now remains to be seen what that 
evidence is worth and by means of it to estab- 
lish the historical facts. 



CHAPTER VI. 



INTERNAL CRITICISM: INTERPRETATION OF THE 
SOURCES AND VALUE OF THE SOURCES. 

IN Bernheim's Lehrbuch as well as in Lang- 
lois and Seignobos' liitrodiLction^ Criti- 
cism is divided into two parts, and the 
second part is called Internal Criticism. The 
agreement does not, however, extend to the sub- 
divisions. As I pointed out in a previous 
chapter, Seignobos makes Interpretation the 
first head under Internal Criticism, while Bern- 
heim makes Interpretation the first subdivision 
under his third main division, Aulfassung. 

The authors do not disagree as to what the 
business of Internal Criticism is. According 
to Seignobos it "is destined to discern in the 
document that which may be accepted as true" 
(p. 117); according to Bernheim, its business 
is to "determine the reality of the events" (p. 
355, edition of ISO!). 

Why, then, should Interpretation form a part 
of Criticism in the one work and not in the 
other? Is it because they disagree upon the 
meaning of Interpretation? Apparently not. 
Bernheim, it is true, deals with both remains 
and traditions, while Seignobos has traditions 
chiefly in mind — for his purpose, clearly a wise 
limitation; but in dealing with written tradi- 
tions, both authors agree that the mission of 
Interpretation is to discover the thoughts that 
the writer expressed in the text. It is true 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 63 

that Kernheim states that the work of Interpre- 
tation is to understand the testimony of the 
source in its signiticanoe for the connection of 
the facts, but when he works this idea out he 
gives us nothing more than Seignobos does. 
Bernheim's idea, as I understand it, is this: the 
isolated facts have been determined through 
Criticism, by a comparison of the sources that 
have been tested; under Auffassung, the student 
should interpret these facts— find out what they 
mean and then combine them. But is it pos- 
sible to complete the work of Internal Criti- 
cism, to determine what facts are established 
by the sources without having first interpreted 
the sources ? Clearly not. 

Yet, on the other hand, why not introduce 
Interpretation earlier even than Seignobos has 
done, and make it a part of External Criticism ? 
To test the genuineness of a source, to localize 
it, to analyze it, we are obliged to interpret it, 
to get at the thoughts that the writer wished to 
express, and that is interpretation. The work 
of interpretation may begin at the very outset 
of the work of the historian. As Bernheim 
states, the moment that he recognizes certain 
material as historical sources, he is interpret- 
ing it. 

Interpretation thus forming a part of so 
many of the divisions of method, it is not an 
easy matter to decide just where it shall be 
treated. After taking everything into consid- 
eration, it has seemed wisest to me to make a 
compromise and treat the following topics 
under Internal Criticism: (1) Determination of 



64: HISTORICAL METHOD. 

the Value of the Source; (2) Interpretation of 
the Source; and (3) Establishment of the 
Facts. I think that good reasons may be »iven 
for such an arrano^ement. 

Although each fact must be examined by it- 
self to determine its value, it is necessary first 
of all to form a general estimate of the value 
of the work from the character of the source 
and from the individuality of the writer. It is 
just as legitimate to do that work before tak- 
ing up the formal interpretation of the source 
as it is to deal with the problems of External 
Criticism before the source has been carefully 
interpreted. 

The value of the material in a source is de- 
termined by three things: (1) The Character 
of the Source; (2) the Individuality of the 
Writer; jind (3) the Influence of Time and 
Place. Following the classification given under 
Quellenkunde, Bernheim considers the manner 
in which the facts are influenced by the form 
of the source. Language, newspapers, politi- 
cal pamphlets, speeches, proclamations, diplo- 
matic correspondence, chronicles, genealogies, 
memoires, biographies, ballads, pictures, etc., 
are passed in review and the characteristic 
features of each brought out. Newspapers ex- 
press the views of a party, but as a record of 
events may be worthless; a political pamphlet 
may be accepted as containing the views of an 
individual; it is well known that the speeches 
in the writings of the Greek and Roman his- 
torians are, for the most part, simply rhetorical 
exercises; war bulletins, party proclamations, 



inSTOKirAI. MF.TilOD. (15 

etc., ViVe notoriously unreliable; diplomatic cor- 
respondence is the "chosen region of lies;" 
the comedies of Aristophanes hardly con- 
tain reliable evidence touching the men and 
events of Athenian history; ballads are sources, 
but their testimony will help us little in our 
effort to establish the facts of history; con- 
temporary pictures are often distorted by ig- 
norance, prejudice, and passion. 

But it is to tradition, both written and oral, 
that Bernheim devotes the most of his space. 
He traces the process by which the written 
tradition is formed, and indicates the deform- 
ing influences to which it is subjected. It is 
the business of Internal Criticism to free the 
tradition, as far as possible, from all these in- 
fluences. In this connection, it is necessary to 
know when the record was made, where, and 
by whom. This information was supplied us 
bj External Criticism. The necessity of know- 
ing all that we can about the writer takes us 
to the second division of Value; Value as De- 
termined by the Individuality of the Writer. 

But before passing to this division, a word 
should be said concerning the value of oral tra- 
dition. When it comes to us directly from the 
witness it may have considerable value, but 
when it has been handed on for a generation or 
more without being recorded, it assumes a 
mythical form and it is generally impossible to 
separate fact from fiction. The rule is that 
when a student perceives that he has to do with 
a myth or a sage, instead of attempting to dis- 
cover the nucleus around which the work of the 



66 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

imao^ination has fathered, he shall discard the 
myth in toto. Of course, I do uot mean to say 
that the material of this character may not be 
of great value in showing us what views a peo- 
ple — Greek or Roman — held concerning its own 
past; this material simply does not help us to 
discover what that past really was. 

This is heroic practice and all students of 
history have not been strong enough to follow 
it. Grote understood the problem and simply 
narrated the myths as the Greeks knew them. 
'•Two courses, and two only, are open," he 
wrote; "either to pass over the myths altogether 

* * * , or else to give an account of them 
as myths; to recognize and respect their specifio 
nature, and to abstain from confounding them 
with ordinary and certifiable history" (Vol. L, 
Parti., Chap. XVIII). 

With this method. Cur tins was not content. 
He believed "that a wealth of reminiscences 
survives in the myths, whose very essence con- 
sists in expressing a people's consciousness of 
the beginnings of its history" (Vol. I., Bk. L, 
Chap. II). AVorking on this theory, he at- 
tempted to separate fact from fiction, and to re- 
construct early Greek history by the use of the 
myths. His chapters based on this kind of ma- 
terial should be studied by the young historian 
as an example of how history should not be 
written. 

Returning, now, to the second division of 
Value, as Determined by the Individuality of 
the Writer, let us consider its place in Internal 
Criticism. 



HISTORICAL METHOD. bi 

It is clear that the individuality of the writer 
is the most important factor to be taken into 
account in judging the value of written tradi- 
tion. For written tradition is nothing more 
than the record of some person's conception of 
an event. The value of the conception depends, 
very clearly, upon the personality of the witness. 
The information that the historian requires 
concerning the witness is of two kinds, intellec- 
tual and moral. Was he able to observe exactly 
and to describe correctly what he saw? Was 
he desirous of seeing the truth and of telling 
the truth? 

It is not an easy task to answer both of these 
questions in a satisfactory manner. Sometimes 
the larger part of our information must be 
drawn incidentally from the author's own 
works. How little we know about the Greek 
and Roman historians! Herodotus, Thucydides, 
Xenophon, Polybius, Plutarch, Arrian, Livy, 
Sallust, and Tacitus are comparatively unknown 
men although their histories are world-famous. 
What we know about Thucydides could be put 
into a few lines. It is not not known when nor 
where his history was written (I mean exactly, 
of course); we do not know how old he was, 
nor when he began to write. 

But what is it, in particular, that the historian 
needs to know? He must know what the birth 
and education of his witness was; in what class 
of society he moved; what his powers of mind 
were; v:hathis occupations had been; what spe- 
cial training he had had that fitted him to ob- 
serve these particular facts and what opportu- 



68 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

nities he had for observation. These would be 
the intellectual requirements touchinor his ability 
to tell the truth. There are other requirements 
that are partly intellectual and partly moral. 
Were his prejudices and passions so strong 
that he would ))e unable to see the truth or that 
he would unconsciously misrepresent what he 
/ saw ? 

; In connection with his moral fitness, the his- 

I torian would know whether the witness is an 
honest man or not; whether he was filled with 
a desire to know the truth, and when he knew 
it, whether he would consider it his sacred duty 
to tell it. Among the few poorly established 
data that w^e have concerning the life of Sal- 
lust, there is a statement that, while governing 
Numidia, he plundered it and escaped punish- 
ment only by bribery. Whether these state- 
ments are correct or not is of little importance 
here, but if they are correct, what influence 
will they have in shaping our opinion of the 
value of evidence coming from such a man? 

Seignobos formulates two series of questions 
to be used in determining the accuracy and 
' good faith of a writer. "The reasons for 
doubting good faith are: (1) the author's int- 
I erest; (2) the force of circumstances, official 
reports; (3) sympathy and antipathy; (4) van- 
ity; (5) deference to public opinion; (6) liter- 
ary distinction. The reasons for doubting ac- 
curacy are: (1) the author a bad observer, 
hallucinations, illusions, prejudices; (2) the 
author not well situated for observing; (3) neg- 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 69 

liorence and indifference; (4) fact not of a 
nature to be directly observed." » 

Bernheira makes a third subdivision under 
Value, namely. Value as Influenced by Time 
and Place. It is easy to see how important this 
point might be. What source can be rightly 
understood if we fail to consider the age in 
which it was written ? To what extent was the 
knowledge of a witness hampered by lack of 
means of communication — railroad, telegraph, 
and post — as in the Middle Ages? How was 
the value of his work affected by a low stand- 
ard of truth, by an unscientific public opinion, 
by a lack of aids to research, and by defective 
methods? Was the record that we have before 
us typical of the best or of the poorest work 
of the age? And as to the influence of place, 
what was the nationality of the writer? Who 
could understand the value of Tacitus' Ger- 
many, if he did not constantly remember that it 
is a work written by a Roman, who from the 
point of view of Roman civilization described 
the manners and customs of the primitive 
Germans for Roman readers? 'Ihe value of 
Caesar's description of the Germans is limited 
by the fact that he observed only the people 
on the border. 

Such are the leading questions to be ans- 
wered in the effort to form a general estimate 
of the value of the source as determined by the 
Character of the Source, the Individuality of the 
Writer, and the Influence of Time and Place. 

1 This analysis is taken from the Contents of a recent trans- 
lation of Lanslois and Sei^nobos by Mr. G. G. Berry. The work 
is published by Henry Holt & Co. The tiile is '• Introduction to 
the Study of History." This book should be in the library of 
every student and teacher of history. 



70 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

Young's Travels in France furnish one of the 
best examples of satisfactory written tradition. 
The work itself is a journal, where, as a rule, 
the events of each day were recorded on the 
evening of that day and the journal was pub- 
lished practically as it was written. From the 
point of view of the character of the source, 
little more could be desired. 

Young was an ideal witness. He had literally 
been trained to make just such a journal. He 
early became interested in agriculture, and, be- 
ing of a good family, with considerable wealth, 
he was able to experiment and to travel for the 
purpose of studying the condition of agricul- 
ture, industry, and commerce in England and 
Ireland. He published the results of his obser- 
vations and became famous. Through his work 
he made the acquaintance of distinguished 
Frenchmen before he had traveled in that coun- 
try. He was a born student, a keen observer, 
and as honest as the day. When he went to 
France in 1787, to do for that country what he 
had done for England and Ireland, he was 
equipped as few men ever have been for such 
word. He made three journeys through the 
kingdom, and every facility was given him to 
find out what he wanted to know. 

Although he looks at every thing from the 
point of view of the eighteenth century English- 
man, he is so frank in his statements and so de- 
sirous of being exact, that no Frenchman could 
have been fairer to France than Arthur Young 
was. 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 71 

Havinof formed a oreneral estimate of the 
Value of the Source, the historian proceeds to 
interpret it. Interpretation has already been 
defined. Bernheim treats of the interpretation 
of remains and traditions and, like Seignobos, 
devotes the most of his space to the considera- 
tion of the interpretation of tradition. Under 
this subdivision, the points considered are In- 
terpretation of the Writing; Interpretation of 
the Language; Interpretation from the Char- 
acter of the Source, the Time and Place of 
Origin, and the Individuality of the Writer. 

A historian must be able to interpret the 
Avriting of the documents employed. This does 
not mean simply ability to read the letters, but 
to interpret abbreviations correctly and to un- 
derstand all the peculiarities of the record. 
Langlois says " Scholars who have received no 
regular paleographical initiation can almost 
always be recognized by the gross errors which 
they commit from time to time in deciphering, 
errors which are sometimes enough to com- 
pletely ruin the subsequent operations of criti- 
cism and interpretation. " 

Some interpretation of abbreviations is often 
called for in printed sources. In French works 
of the latter part of the sixteenth century, it 
is the regular thing to omit the n or m after a 
vowel and to indicate the omission by a mark 
over the vowel: gentil-home, quad, no. The co- 
lonial records of our country present some in- 
teresting problems in the interpretation of 
writing. 

The interpretation of the language of a source 



72 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

demands: (1) a knowledge of the meaning of 
the words of a language used at a given time, 
(2) in a given country, (3) by a given writer, 
and (4) an understanding from the context of 
the different ways in which the same author 
uses the same words in different places. The 
important thing, as Seignobos points out, is to 
discover just what the author did say. Too 
many historians scan their sources for the pur- 
pose of finding something and read into the 
text the meaning they are searching for. It is 
not an uncommon thing to discover that the 
references given to support a statement have 
quite a different meaning when studied in their 
context from what they have w'hen isolated. 
How much is demanded of the historian can be 
seen from the four points on interpretation given 
above. 

In dealing with a Latin text of the Middle 
Ages, a knowledge of classical Latin is not suffi- 
cient. Nor is a general knowledge of Medieval 
Latin sufficient. The historian must know how 
certain words were used in a particular century, 
in a particular part of Europe, and by a partic- 
ular writer. 

Sufficient training combined with knowledge 
and study will enable the student to get at the 
literal sense of his source. A second examina- 
tion may be necessary to discover hidden mean- 
ings, to interpret the real meaning underlying 
irony, sarcasm, and allegory. 

Just as the search for the value of the source 
is helped by a knowledge of the character of 
the source, so is the interpretation aided in tk« 



HISTORICAL METHOD. I 6 

same way. The comedies of Aristophanes, the 
dialogues of Plato, the writings of the Middle 
Ages, and the Renaissance can be interpreted 
correctly only when we keep in mind the char- 
acter of the sources. Aristophanes wrole to 
amuse the Athenians; Plato used Socrates as a 
mouthpiece to express Plato's ideas; the Let- 
ters of Obscure Men were written to satirize 
the monks. 

To interpret a source correctly, the historian 
must so reconstruct the conditions of time and 
place that the document will appeal to him as 
it appealed to a contemporary. To interpret 
the source from the individuality of the writer, 
he must not only be familiar with the writer's 
style, but with his conceptions, his philosophy 
of life, the circle of his relations and interests, 
his fund of information. In a word, the his- 
torian must endeavor to put himself in the 
place of the writer. 

Few, if any, historians accomplish all this. 
And yet, this is the ideal that the conscientious 
historian must set before himself and toward 
which he must direct his efforts. 

The writing of history is not the easy task 
that many believe it. So exacting is it that tho 
man who does his work thoroughly can do but 
a small bit of research work. This, however, 
should be no cause for discouragement. A 
vast army is at work, and if co-operation is 
carried far enough great results may be 
obtained. 

Having determined the value of the sources 



74 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

and interpreted tUem, the next step is to make 
use of the statements contained in the sources 
for the purpose of establishing the facts of his- 
tory. 



CHAPTER VII. 



INTERNAL CRITICISM: ESTABLISHMENT OF THE 
FACTS. 

THE end that historical criticism has ever 
in view is the establishment of the his- 
torical facts. The determination of the 
genuineness of the sources in hand, their localiza- 
tion and analysis are of value to the historian 
only so far as they enable hira to decide whether 
this material shall be admitted as evidence; the 
determination of the value of the sources as a 
whole and their interpretation simply make 
clear to him the general reliability of his wit- 
nesses and furnish him with their conceptions 
and affirmations concerning the subject under 
investigation. But what is the relation of these 
conceptions and affirmations of witnesses to 
what actually occurred? To answer that ques- 
tion is the last work of Internal Criticism. 

The material drawn from the sources is di- 
vided by Seignobos into two natural groups, 
conceptions and affirmations. The first are 
easily disposed of; the last not so easily. 

The testimony of a single source is sufficient 
to establish the existence and character of a 
conception. Luther's ninety-five theses con- 
tain the views that he held at the time of their 
publication. Whether they are true or not 
does not concern the historian; their existence 
and nature are established by one genuine copy 
of the theses. Plato's Republic, Machiavelli's 
Prince, Rousseau's Social Contract, and other 



76 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

works of a similar nature may, when known to 
be genuine, be held to contain the conceptions 
of these men concerning government. Con- 
ceptions of this nature furnish the material for 
histories of doctrines and dogmas. The history 
of painting, of architecture, and of science 
may be written in the same way from remains 
of the work of artists and the architects, or from 
the writings of scientists. 

Closely related to conceptions is another class 
of material, employed, for the most part, un- 
consciously in the works of the imagination. 
While the imagination may construct wholes 
that are not real, the elements with which the 
poet or novelist works are drawn from expe- 
rience. It is possible, then, for the historian to 
sift out these elements and make use of them. 
This procedure is psychologically sound, and 
its value may be easily tested. Examine any 
modern novel dealing with familiar life and it 
will be readily seen that the elements with which 
the novelist works are all real. I do not refer, 
of course, to historical novels where the ele- 
ments are consciously acquired and consciously 
introduced into the picture. 

What is true of the literature of this cen- 
tury is even truer of literature of past centuries. 
It is for this reason that the Homeric poems 
may be used as historical material. The old 
bards knew little about the siege of Troy, but 
they could not construct their imaginary pic- 
tures of the earlier society without making use 
of the elements found in the society of which 
they formed a part. Battles and sieges, 
swords, spears, shields, helmets, chariots, war- 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 77 

riors, and horses; palaces and huts; kings, 
princes, freemen, and slaves; fields, crops, 
oxen, ploughs, were things that formed a part 
of their daily lives, and out of these they 
wrought-their epics. 

There was no Agamemnon, but there were 
great kings; there was no Achilles, but there 
were great warriors. 

In using this material, however, it is neces- 
sary to keep constantly in mind Seignobos' 
limitation. In the first place, there should be 
a clear understanding of the meaning of the 
term "elements." Elements are irreducible. 
They deal with "matter, form, color, and 
number." Thus the historian may take from 
the poem, " objects, their destination, and com- 
nion acts." The poet might speak of "golden 
doors." That is not an element. The elements 
a'-e ''gold," and "doors." Furthermore, these 
elements, drawn from literature, are not local- 
ized; we know notlnng of their frequency, and, 
if they are drawn from a single poem, nothing 
can justify us in making generalizations upon 
them concerning the morality and artistic ideals 
of a whole people. Yet with even these limi- 
tations the results obtained from the study of 
such material are not insignificant. Without 
them, we should lie unable to construct one of 
the most interesting chapters in Greek history. 

With the esta1)lishment of the facts from 
aflirniations the case is quite different. "The 
affirmation of a !<higJe source concerning an ex- 
ternal fact is never sufficient to establish that 
fact." The chances of error and falsehood are 



78 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

too numerous, and the conditions under which 
the observations were made are so little known 
to us that we are unable to determine whether 
the witness escaped all these chances or not. 
Criticism of tradition is negative work; it 
simply lays the affirmations before us with an 
indication of their value, but does not establish 
any fact.' 

These affirmations are only probable or im- 
probable. To reach a definitive result another 
operation is necessary; the affirmations found in 
different sources upon the same point must be 
compared. The mechanical preparation for this 
operation consists in gathering together upon 
the same or different slips of paper affirmations 
bearing upon the same event. The cases that 
generally arise in the study of affirmations may 
be grouped under three heads: (1) When the 
affirmations agree; (2) when there is but one 
affirmation; and (3) when the affirmations dis- 
agree. 

The problems under the first head naturally 
present fewer difficulties than those arising un- 

1 The reader will recall that in the treatment of Interpretat'on of 
the Sources I noted that " Bernheim ♦ * » deals with both re- 
mains and traditions, while Seignobos has traditions chiefly in 
mind— for hispurpose, clearly a wise limitation." I did not state, at 
the time, what his purpose was. The failure to treat remains has 
been criticized by Bernheim in a review of the book found in the 
January number of the Vierteljnhrschrift for 1 99. This omiss on 
is excusable. The book was founded on lectures delivered at the 
Sorbonne for the benefit of the young students of history. Now it 
\e very doubtful whether it is desirable to teach a beginner all that 
is known about a subject. The college undergraduate deals in his 
historical work almost wholly with written tradition, and a < ook 
serving as an "Introduction to Historical Study" might with ^ood 
reason do a thing that a complete treatise on historical method 
could not do, that is, emphasize tradition and neglect remains. 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 79 

der the other heads. If the sources have been 
tested and been found to be genuine; if they 
have been localized and analyzed; if their value 
has also stood the test, then their agreement 
upon certain facts establishes these facts beyond 
the possibility of a doubt. This kind of proof 
has been expressed in the form of an axiom by 
Rhomberg (Die Erhebung der Geschichte zum 
Range einer Wissenschaft Wien, 1883, page 21): 
" When two or more contemporary (eye or ear) 
witnesses report independently of one another^ 
the same fact, with many like details, that do 
not have a necessary or usual, but rather a cas- 
ual connection with the fact, then the accounts, 
so fur as they agree, must be true, if the fact 
and its details wei^e so clearly perceptible that no 
self-deception coidd have heen possihle.'^'' 

For the axiom to be valid all the condit ons 
must be fulfilled. In the first place the wit- 
nesses must be independent of one another. 
This point is commonly overlooked by the un- 
trained student. The slovenly manner in which 
evidence is frequently handled is well illustrated 
by Freeman's comment on the method of 
Thierry, the author of the "History of the Nor- 
man Conquest." " He would kill a man by one 
name in one page,'' writes Freeman (Methods 
of Historical Study, page 280), "and bring him 
to life by another name in a later page, each 
time with a perfectly good reference; he simply 
had not learned the art of probing and weighing 
his references and finding out either what they 
meant or what they were worth." 



so HISTORICAL METHOD. 

Even writers who do not blunder as Thierry 
did do not realize the necessity of proving the 
independence of their witnesses. They appear 
to believe that facts are established by a cloud 
of witnesses who may or may not be so many 
independent observers. The analysis of the 
source, the only protection against ' ' repeaters," 
is trying work, consumes much time, and often 
leaves the historian in uncertainty. Yet upon 
the doing of this thing, and, above all, upon the 
way in which it is done, depends the value of 
the fact's established by the evidence. 

The interdependence of witnesses is often of 
a subtle kind that eludes the analysis of the un- 
initiated. Members of the same party regard- 
ing events from the same point of view, they 
are not, in reality, independent of each other, 
and their agreement upon certain points may 
prove nothing more than that they heard, be- 
lieved, and repeated a common report. Dubois- 
Cranc6's Analyse de la revolution fran(;aise is 
apparently independent of the Souvenirs of 
Thibaudeau. Neither could have seen the work 
of the other, for they had been dead many 
years before the works were made public. 
Both men were members of the assembly of 
1789. On the 20th of June the Commons, ex- 
cluded from their hall, assembled in the Tennis 
Court and took the famous oath never to sepa- 
rate. On the 22d they would have met again in 
the same place, but, report says, the Comte 
d'Artois had engaged the court for tennis and 
the deputies were obliged to go elsewhere. Is 
this true? Both Dubois-Cranc6 (page 22) and 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 81 

Thibavideau (page 35) state the fact in these 
terms. They were contemporaries, members of 
the exchicled Commons, and independent wit- 
nesses. Hence it must be true. But loere they in- 
dependent ? When did they write their aceonnts 
of these events? Dubois-Crance, ten years 
later; Thibaudeau, fourteen years later. I 
shall show further on that their sole source of 
information was probably nothing more than a 
common report that originated among the ene 
mies of the nobility and that in time passed 
unchallenged as a historical fact. This one ex- 
ample should be sufficient to convince the most 
skeptical of the necessity of critical study of 
the sources. 

According to Seignobos, the only observa- 
tions that are certainly independent are "con- 
tained in different documents, coming from 
different writers, belonging to different groups, 
and working under different conditions. That 
is to say, cases of agreement thai are fully con- 
clusive are rare, save in modern history." 

But the witnesses may be independent 
and yet self-deceived. The much-discussed 
case of the miracles of Bernhard of Clairvaux 
offers a good illustration. The account of 
these miracles is found in the "liber miracu- 
lorum S. Bernhardi, "a contemporary record by 
reliable eye witnesses. The men were cer- 
tainly "self-deceived." 

The existence of the devil — to use an illus- 
tration from Seignobos — is better established by 
independent eye witnesses than the existence of 
the tyrant Pisistratus. Not a single coutem- 
6 



82 HI^TORICAL METHOD. 

porary testifies to having seen Pisistratus; 
"thousands of 'eye witnesses' declare that 
they have seen the devil. There are few 
historical facts established by an equal num- 
ber of independent witnesses. Yet we do 
not hesitate to reject the devil and to admit 
Pisistratus. It is because the existence of the 
devil would be irreconcilable with all the con- 
stituted sciences." 

If we are certain that our witnesses are in- 
dependent and are not self-deceived, we are 
ready to compare their affirmations and see if 
they atrree. The concordance to be looked for 
is not exact agreement in form and content; 
that, as was shown in another place, is proof 
of dependence. Scientific agreement is agree- 
melit, upon certain points, of divergent affirma- 
tions. The points where the affirmations cross 
are the points scientifically established. Here 
are two independent accounts written on the 
spot, of the employment of troops at the Royal 
session of June 23, 1T89. 

The first is by the Englishman, Arthur 
Young; the second by the Frenchman, Gaultier 
de Biauzat, a member of the assembly. 
Young says (Travels, 1892, page 175): ''The 
important day is over; in the morning Ver- 
sailles seemed filled with troops; the streets, 
about 10 o'clock, were lined with the French 
guards, and some Swiss regiments, etc. ; the 
hall of the states was surrounded, and sentinels 
fixed in all passages, and at the doors; and 
none but deputie* were admitted." 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 83 

Gaultier writes (Sa vie et sa correspondance, 
II., page 136): " The deputies were obliged to 
traverse a body of troops in order to betake 
themselves to the hall of the Estates, without 
having even the liberty of making choice among 
the three avenues that lead there and which 
have been open to the public until to-day." 

The two accounts prove that at least one 
street was lined with troops. Gaultier's state- 
ment that only one avenue was open to the hall 
seems to agree with Young's statement that sol- 
diers were posted about the hall and were to be 
found in other streets for the purpose of clos- 
ing all avenues but one to the deputies. 

The second group under the Establishment of 
the Fact deals with cases of single affirmations. 
*'In such cases, all other sciences," writes Seig- 
nobos, "follow an invariable rule; an isolated 
observation does not become a part of the sci- 
ence; it is cited (with the name of the observer), 
but no inference is drawn from it. Historians 
have no avowable motive for proceeding other- 
wise. When they have been able to establish a 
fact only by the affirmation of a single man, 
however honest he may be, they ought not to 
assert the fact, but simply do as the naturalists 
do, mention che information (Thucydides 
affirms, Caesar says that): it is all that they 
have a right to assert. As a matter of fact, all 
have continued the practice, as in the Middle 
Ages, of asserting a thing on the authority of 
Thucydides or of Caesar; many push their na- 
ivete so far as to say it in so many words. 
Thus given over without scientific control to 



84 HISTOEICAL METHOD. 

their natural credulity, historians go to the point 
of admittino; upon the insufficient presumption 
of a single source every affirmation that is not 
contradicted by another source. Hence the ab- 
surd consequence that history is more affirma- 
tive and seems better constituted for almost un- 
known periods, from which but a single record 
has l)een preserved, than for facts known to us 
by thousands of contradictory documents. The 
Persian Wars, known solely through Herodotus, 
the adventures of Fredegonda, narrated solely 
by Gregory of Tours, are less subject to discus- 
sion than the events of the Revolution described 
by hundreds of contemporaries." He may well 
add, "To draw history from this shameful 
condition, a revolution in the minds of histor- 
ians is a necessity," 

I have quoted Seignobos at length, because the 
point is of the utmost importance and because 
the case could hardly be stated more clearly 
and energetically than he has stated it. How- 
ever, the turning point has been reached and the 
attitude of the best men is expressed by Holm 
in the preface to his Griechische Geschichte 
(I., page XI. 1886): "My history of Greece 
ought in the text to give an image of the ex- 
isting material (sources), in that' I express my- 
self with certainty only when the sources per- 
mit, while, on the contrary, 1 express myself 
doubtingly when all or much is uncertain. 
8uch is not the general practice to-day But 
a historian of the first rank (Droysen) de- 
clared at the end of his life that he no longer 
recognized as correct the method, so favorable 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 85 

to beautiful and powerful narration, that pre- 
sented the results of investigation simply as 
historical facts." 

In historical writing, a readable narrative is 
not the all-important thing; to which all else is 
sacrificed. The truth is the thing, and it is the 
sacred duty of the historian to follow the 
method of Holm and others and to make his 
text reflect the condition of his sources. When 
the narrative rests simply on the statements 
of a single man, the reader should know it, 
should know who the witness was, and should un- 
derstand that such a state of things yields only 
probability and not certainty. How common 
the contrar}^ practice is can easily be learned 
by rapidly examining standard histories of 
Greece and Rome. As a rule, facts stated with 
the utmost certainty are supported by a refer- 
ence to a single source— awe? often this is only 
a derived source. 

The third group, that dealing with cases of 
contradictory affirmations, alone remains to be 
considered. In such cases the contradictions 
are only apparent, and may be reconciled by a 
careful study. Such cases I shall pass over, and 
turn to the problems that deal with genuine 
contradictions. 

The independence of the witnesses must be 
determined first of all. This study may dis- 
pose of the case, by proving the witnesses on 
the one side were not independent, as in the 
case cited above. But it may be necessary, be- 
fore a conclusion can be reached, to submit all 
the witnesses to all the tests of external and in- 



86 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

terniil criticism. The witnesses may be inde- 
pendent, but not equally well informed nor 
equally honest. In the case cited above, deal- 
ing- with the Tennis Court, it is possible to set 
against these writers, making their records ten 
or more years after the event, writers favor- 
able to the Commons, and making their records 
on the spot or a year or two afterward. Not 
only do they know nothing about the legend of 
the action of the Comte d' Artois, but they also 
give most satisfactory explanations for the 
change of meeting place on the 22d. The truth 
is the Tennis Court was not a fit place for an 
assembly. It was simply a bare hall — as bare 
as it is to-day — and, in addition to that, on the 
morning of the 22d was half filled with a curi- 
ous public. In spite of all this, every standard 
history of the Revolution repeats this legend 
as if it were a historical fact. 

If the evidence on either side is equally re- 
liable, there is, as a rule, but one thing to be 
done: the historian must suspend judgment and 
announce that he can reach no definite results. 

It is in this way that the suppositions and 
affirmations derived from the earlier work of 
criticism are compared and the facts established. 
With this process, the critical or analytical 
operations are brought to an end. The second 
or synthetic stage has been reached. The 
historian is ready for the constructive work or 
the Auffassung, as Bernheim calls it. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



SYNTHETIC OPERATIONS: IMAGINING THE FACTS, 

GROUPING THE FACTS, AND CONSTRUCTIVE 

REASONING. 

THE divisions of method treated in the pre- 
ceding chapters embrace the major part 
of "the rules and artifices" that, ar- 
ranged systematical!}'^, constitute history a sci- 
ence. Heuristic (Quellenkundeor Preliminary 
Knowledge) and Criticism (External and In- 
ternal) forming, as they do, the first steps in 
method, and dealing with the least complex 
parts of the historical process, have received the 
most attention, have taken scientific shape, and 
are thus out of the field of dilettanteism. But 
this is not true of the later operations. While 
there is a general agreement as to what the 
work of criticism is and how this work can 
best be accomplished, the field of historical 
synthesis is largely unexplored territory. His- 
torians do not agree as to the end, nor the means 
of reaching the end. Under these conditions, it 
is no cause for wonder that men, laying no 
claim to historical training, write so-called his- 
torical narratives, and that these narratives 
find acceptance on account of their literary, but 
not on account of their scientific, qualities. 

The portion of Bernheim's Lehrbuch devoted 
to historical construction is the most unsatisfao- 
tor}' part of the whole book. Bernheim might, 
perhaps, justify himself by repl34ng that his 



88 HISTORICAL iMETIlOD. 

purpose was simply to put into systematic form 
the results that have thus far been obtained. 
Seignobos, however, does more. This part of 
the Introduction is a real contribution to 
method. 

It seems desirable, at this point, to again com- 
pare the arrangements of the two books and to 
outline the topics to be treated in this and the 
following chapters. 

The third and fourth divisions in Bernheim, 
Auffassung and Darstellung, correspond fairly 
well to the Operations syntMtiques of Seigno- 
bos, but there are some points of difference that 
shou'd not be overlooked. Bernheim subdivides 
Auffassung into Interpretation, Kombiuation, 
Reproduction uud Phantasie, Affassung der 
allgemcineii Bedingungeii (conception of the 
milieu)^ Geschichtsphilosophie (Philosophy of 
History). ;ind ^^'osell dor Aufi'us.sung (Nature of 
Auffassung). Darstellung (Exposition) is not 
subdivided in the table of contents. 

Seignobos subdivides Opdrations synthH'tqybes 
into Conditions (j^ndrales dela construction his- 
torique^ Grroujyement desfaits (Grouping of the 
Facts), Raisonnement constructif^ Construction 
desformuJes g^n^rcdes^ Exposition. 

I have shown in a previous chapter that while 
Bernheim treats Interpretation under Auffas- 
sung, Seignobos deals with it under Criticism. 
Grouping of the Facts, in Seignobos, corres- 
ponds to Kritischc Ordnung des Materials (Crit- 
ical Arrangement of the Material) — Beruheim's 
last division under Criticism — and to a part of 
Kombination ; Reproduction und Phantasie, 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 89 

Seignobos deals with in his chapter on General 
Conditions of Historical Construction, but does 
not devote a whole chapter to it; a portion of 
the chapter on Korabination corresponds to 
Haisomicnient construct If,' Seignobos does not 
deal with the Allgeraeine Bedingungen nor with 
Geschichtsphilosophie; Bernheim's Darstelluno^ 
treats the same topic that Seignobos deals with 
in Construction des formules generales and in 
Exposition. If Seignobos' table of contents 
were complete, he would have a chapter on 
" Imagining the Facts." 

Combining the topics treated in the two works, 
1 shall consider in this and the remaining 
chapters the following subjects under the gen- 
eral head of Synthetic Operations; Imagining 
the Facts, Grouping the Facts, Constructive 
Reasoning, Environment, the Philosophy of 
History, Exposition. 

The lirst three subjects form a natural group. 
The facts imagined and grouped and the gaps 
in the evidence filletl by constructive reasoni?\-T 
— as far as possible — we have completed the 
narrower work of historical construction. It 
is this group that 1 shall deal with in the pres- 
ent chapter. 

Criticism supplies us with isolated facts, but 
isolated facts do not constitute history. The 
facts must be organized and this organization 
must depend upon the character of the material. 
What is this material? A heterogeneous mass 
of simple statements, ditfering in generality, in 
certainty,and limited to a definite time and place. 

This is the kind of material supplied by Crit- 
icism, and from it the historian must construct 



90 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

his fabric. But how? He can not adopt the 
method of the natural sciences, for the stu- 
dent of nature can observe his facts directly, 
while the method of the historian — as was 
shown in the introductory chapter — must be 
that of indirect observation. The work of im- 
aginina" and grouping the facts calls the fancy 
into plu^^ It is the scientific fancy with which 
we have to do and not the poetic fancy. 

The poet is free to create the material with 
which he works; the historian has his material 
given him and is limited by it, while he is free 
to combine it under the subjective categories of 
his mind. The uncontrolled imagination is a 
dangerous thing in history, and leads to false 
conceptions and combinations. 

Before the facts can be combined, the his- 
torian must endeavor to see the isolated facts 
as the witness saw them. He must imagine the 
facts. Yet how imagine facts that will be real^ 
The thing is possible onl}'^ on the assumption of 
the identity of human nature. 

If humanity in all ages did not have much in 
common, it would be impossible to reconstruct 
the past. For the material with which the his- 
torian works is not simply the heterogeneous 
facts drawn from the sources; he works also 
with the categories of his own brain. It is only 
through his own experience, analogous to the 
experience of men in the past, that he is able to 
picture to himself the events of the past 

But the past is not exactly like the present; 
in fact, it is the business of the historian to show 
that successive ages are unlike and to make 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 91 

clear how they differ. The first imas^e, then, 
that is aroused in his mind is generally incor- 
rect and must be modified. The difficulty of 
imagining the facts obtained from the sources 
is largely due to the circumstance that they are 
ps3^chical facts and described in inexact lan- 
guage. What is a "warrior," a "combat," a 
"king," or a "tribe "^ 

To picture to ourselves facts that we have not 
seen described in such unscientific language is 
a disheartening task, and yet this is what the 
historian must undertake to do. ^Moreover, all 
of the elements of the image can not be drawn 
from the sources. Attempt to picture to your- 
self one of the battles of Greek or Roman his- 
*^ory making use only of source material? It is 
impossible. In imagining the event the histo- 
rian makes a complete picture of it by drawing 
from his own experience; but he must never 
forget to distinguish between these two classes 
of material, and must base his later construc- 
tion only upon the source elements. 

Having imagined the facts, the next step is to 
group them. Here, again, the fancy plays an 
important part. In fact, while much of method 
may be taught, the great historian is the man 
who possesses in addition to technical training 
the genius that enables him to combine the facts. 
"I am an historian," said Niebuhr, "because I 
am able to construct a complete picture from 
the fragments that have been preserved." This 
is a power that few possess, but without it no 
lasting results are possible. 

The simplest method of grouping the facts, 



92 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

and the earliest emplo^^ed, is to o^ronp chrono- 
loorically facts of all kinds happening in the 
same place. It is the method followed for the 
mo^t part by the old historians of (xreece and 
Rome. The later and more scientitic method 
is to base the construction upon the nature of 
the subject matter, to select and group toffether 
facts of the same kind. This has given us his- 
tories of law, religion, art, literature, etc. In 
order to treat the whole social fabric in this 
way, it is necessary to construct a set of ques- 
tions or q\ipM'>onna>ve <i(^n(^ral, as Seignoho>; ca'N 
it, "founded on the nature of the conditions 
and of the manifestations of activity." This 
questionnaire Q,oxi\w[\'S>\k\& following groups: I., 
Material Conditions; 11,, Intellectual Habits 
(not obligatory ) ; III., Material Customs (not 
obligatory); IV., Economic Customs; V., So- 
cial Institutions; VI., Public Institutions (obli- 
gatory). 

This method of grouping facts according to 
their nature may be combined with the lirst 
method of chronological and geographical 
grouping. Thus we might have the history of 
Greek art in the time of Pericles. 

But a scheme that disposes of the facts com- 
mon to many men and persisting through one 
or more centuries does not dispose of all the 
facts. There still remain the acts and words 
peculiar to certain individuals. What shall be 
done with them? What is the part that the 
individual plays in historical development? Is 
the life of society controlled by fixed laws and 
is the individual a helpless atom? These are 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 93 

questions that divide the historians of the con- 
tinent to-day, and in Germany they wage a war 
that is anything but merry. It is the old ques- 
tion of necessity and free will. 

But, as Seignobos sa3^s, one may not take 
sides here. Both general and particular facts 
must be taken into account. History is explan- 
atory of the real, and the real happens but 
once. There is but one evolution of society. 
In this evolution "the facts that succeed one 
another have been the product not of abstract 
laws, but of the conjuncture, at each moment, of 
many facts of different kinds. This conjunc- 
ture, sometimes called chance, has produced a 
series of accidents which have determined the 
particular march of the evolution. The evolu- 
tion is intelligible only by the stud}^ of these 
accidents; history is here on the same footing 
with geology and palaeontology." 

The histor}^ of Roman institutions would be 
unintelligible without a knowledge of the bat- 
tle of Pharsalus. 

" History is thus obliged to combine the 
stud}' of general facts with the study of cer- 
tain particular facts." This mixed character — 
half science, half narrative of adventures — has 
often given rise to the question, " Is history a 
science or an art? " 

There are two kinds of facts, then, to be 
grouped: general facts and particular facts. 
I shall treat them in order. 

In dealing with the general facts that treat of 
habits, manners, and ousioni-;, institutions, lan- 
guage, religion, etc. , after deciding what habit 



94 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

we ^hall study, it is necessary, first of all, to de- 
termine the group to which the habit belongs. 
The natural tendency is to assume that a group 
is made up of like units. Because a group of 
people talk the same language we are apt to 
think that the members of the group have 
everything else in common. A minute's reflec- 
tion would make clear the falsity of this infer- 
ence, "for no real group, not even a central- 
ized society, is a homogeneous entity. What is 
the group of people that talk Greek, the Chris- 
tian group, the group of modern science? The 
English nation consists of Gauls, Scots, and 
Irish J the Catholic church consists of the faith- 
ful scattered throughout the entire world and 
differing in everything except religion.'' The 
Swiss are united in government, but are divided 
in language (French, German, Italian) and in 
religion (Catholic and Protestant). Think of 
the bewildering way in which the groups, 
made up of individuals with one or more habits 
in common, overlap in the United States! 

We must kno.w, then, what people compose 
the group; by what bonds they are united; 
what activities they have in common, and in 
what they differ. This study will show us for 
what a group may serve. For the study of 
language, religion, etc., we would not select a 
national group. 

But even when a group has some habit 
in common, the group is not homogeneous; 
there are subdivisions. Language is divided 
into dialects and religion into sects. It is nec- 
essary to determine the subdivision of each 
grouD. 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 95 

When all the habits of a society have been 
studied, the society as a whole must be examined 
in its relation to other societies of the same 
time. "This is the study of international insti- 
tutions, intellectual, economic, and political 
(diplomacy and the usages in war). * * * 
To all this it would be necessary to add the 
study of habits common to many societies and 
relations that do not take on an official form.'* 
All this gives us nothing more than a descrip- 
tion of society in repose. History, however, 
treats of society in motion, evolving. It is 
necessary to trace the manner in which these 
institutions change. The steps in this process 
are: (1) The choice of the fact whose evolution 
is to be traced; (2) the period of the evolution; 
(3) the successive steps; and (4) the means by 
which the evolution has been brought about. 

The particular facts, the accidents of history, 
still remain to be treated. They are " the facts 
that have acted upon the evolution of each of 
the habits of humanity." All of these facts 
taken together, classed by order of time and 
country, would bind together the special histo- 
ries of the institutions and give a picture of 
the "ensemble of historic evolution." But all 
of the facts can not be described. Which shall 
be chosen? Those without which the evolution 
can not be described. The fact in itself may 
have been small; the effect produced may have 
been decisive, and the effect is the all-important 
thing. 

Both in special histories (the study of habits) 
and in general histories (the study of decisive 



96 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

accidents) it is necessary to mark the stages in 
the evolution, to divide it into periods. This 
is done by means of events. For the special 
history, an event that has produced the for- 
mation or the chani^e of a habit becomes the 
commencement or end of a period. Here the 
event is orenerally of the same species as those 
that form the object of the study, while in oren- 
eral history the periods embrace the evolution 
of several kinds of facts. 

The Migrations, the Renaissance, the Ref- 
ormation, the French Revolution were all- 
embracing in their effect on society. 

The periods thus formed are of unequal 
length. For evolution is not regular and a 
period of slow uneventful evolution is often 
followed by an age of rapid, dramatic trans- 
formation. 

This rapid, fragmentary presentation of the 
grouping of the facts is necessarily unsatisfac- 
tory. The most exhaustive treatise would leave 
but abstract conceptions in the mind of the 
reader when unaccompanied by the study of 
typical cases. If we would learn how to group 
material, we must not only try our own hands at 
it, but we must study the works of successful his- 
torians. Seignobos' '''' Sistoire politique de V 
Europe contemjporaine^''* is an excellent exam- 
ple, because it enables us to see how well he 
applies his own theory. The preface contains 
a discussion of the kinds of classification — log- 

* The work is being translated and wili be pabltshed by Henry 
Holt & Co. 



HISTORICAL mi:ti!<^:»d. 1»7 

ical. chronological, and geographical — a ;d tha 
advantages of each. 

In the work, the three kinds of classifications 
are combined. In the first part, tlie geograph- 
ical order is followed and the interior history 
of each state is studied separately and succes- 
sively; in the second part, the logical order is 
employed and the political phenomena common 
to the diti'erent European societies are grouped 
together; in the third part, the chronological 
order is used, and the exterior relations of the 
states considered. The volume deserves a care- 
ful stud}^ as a successful attempt at scientific 
grouping. 

The picture formed by grouping the facts 
Mould be much less complete, if we had only 
the material that criticism furnished us. In 
this material, there are many gaps. These 
gaps become noticeable during the work of 
grouping the facts, and the historian endeavors 
to meet this difliculty by constructive reason- 
ing. " We set out from the facts made known 
to us by the sources, in order to infer new 
facts. If the reasoning is correct, this method 
of ob'aining know edge is legitimate." 

It is, however, a dangerous method, if not 
employed with the greatest care. Seignobos 
makes the following valuable suggestions con- 
cerning the control of the method: 

(1) Never mix up reasoning with the analy- 
sis of a source; (2) never confound the facts 
drawn directly from the sources with facts ob- 
tained by reasoning; (3 ) never reason unconsci- 
ously, but Dut the argument into logical form 



98 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

and the fallacy is easily detected; (4) if there 
is the least doubt about the soundness of the 
reasoning, draw no conclusions; (5) never at- 
tempt to turn a conjecture (No. 4) into a cer- 
tainty by dwelling upon it. Too long reflec- 
tion upon a few sources renders the conjecture 
familiar and at last plausible. The chances are 
that the first impression is correct. 

There are two ways of employing construc- 
tive reasoning: negative and positive. Nega- 
tive reasoning, or the "argument from silence," 
has already been dealt with. Positive reason- 
ing starts with a fact found in the sources and 
infers a fact not found there. A good illustra- 
tion is given l)y Bernheim; we find in a certain 
document, dated May 10, that the Bishop of 
"Wormes signs himself, " Wormatiensiselectus;" 
a document, dated May 16, bears the signature, 
" Wormatiensis episcopus." From these facts 
we infer the additional facts, that between the 
10th and lOtli the bishop elect was consecrated. 
We infer more. We know that it was custom- 
ary for such a ceremony to fall on Sunday or a 
festival day; computation shows that the l'2th. 
was Sunday, and we infer that the bishop was 
confirmed May 12. 

That this positive reasoning may be exact, it 
is necessary: (1) that the general proposition 
should be exact, that is, "the two facts that it 
assumes to be bound together ought to be of 
such a nature that the first is never found with- 
out the second;" of this we ma}^ be certain only 
when we operate with detailed propositions; 
(2) "That the general proposition may be de- 
tailed, the particular historical fact must itself 



HISTORICAL MKTHOD. 99 

be known in detail." The conditions of reliable 
positive construction are rarely realized. " We 
know too little about the laws of social life and 
too rarely the precise details of an historical 
fact." 

These are the steps in the synthetic opera- 
tions that are included in the group to which 
this chapter is devoted. Having treated the 
Imagining of the Facts, the Grouping of the 
Facts, and Constructive Reasoning, I shall con- 
sider in the next chapter the Environment and 
the Philosophy of History. 



CHAPTER IX. 



SYNTHETIC OPERATIONS: ENVIRONMENT AND 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

THERE was a time, and that not long ago, 
when a work on method would have been 
complete without the treatment of such 
questions as Environment and the Philosophy 
oF History. But that day is past. The histor- 
ian of to-day realizes that it is not only neces- 
sary to consider each event as a link in a chain 
of events — if he would understand the particu- 
lar event — but that he must also possess a 
knowledge of the phyp^cal, psychical, and social 
conditions that form the environment of the 
events. But the sciences dealing with these 
conditions are in a formative state and can 
furnish only scanty assis'ance. Anthropo- 
geography, anthropology, ethnology, individual 
and social psychology, and sociology will trans- 
form historical work when they themselves 
have reached a more advanced stage of develop- 
ment. Under the influence of these sciences, 
synthetic historical work will, in the future, 
become scientific in its turn, and another im- 
portant field will be rescued from dilettanteism. 
The influence of geography upon the de- 
velopment of society is recognized })y histor- 
ians and, as a rule, every history of a people 
is prefaced by a chapter upon the geography 
of the country. But this a rather poor make- 
shift. It is almost equivalent to the presenta- 



HISTOKICAL METHOD. 101 

tion of crude material to be worked over by 
the readers. The question that interests the 
student of history is " W^hat influence did the 
ofeo^raphy of the country have upon the his- 
tory of its people?" That question can not 
be answered by a simple description of the 
natural features of the country; it can not be 
answered once for all by an introductory chap- 
ter. The study of the relation of man to his 
geoofraphical environment must ^o hand in 
hand with the description of the acts that were 
conditioned by that environment. 

In dealing with this subject, it must never be 
forgotten (1) that the historic races did not 
originate in the environment in which we lind 
them, and (2) that man is not passive clay to be 
moulded by his physical surroundings. 

No attempt should be made to explain the 
brilliant history of the Greeks from the geog- 
raphy of Gresce alone. There is no way of de- 
termining how long the Greeks had been in 
Greece previous to the recorded beginnings of 
their history. . It is very certain, however, 
that when they migrated to this country the 
people bore with them tribal characteristics, in- 
herited from ancestors, who had been for thou- 
sands of years subject to natural influences in 
other places. How much, then, that we find in 
Greek character is due to the environment in 
Greece and how much to the earlier environ- 
ment of the ancestors of the Greeks, we shall 
never be able to determine. Suppose, for an in- 
stant, that the records that made it possible to 
explain the presence of the negroes in our south- 



102 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

ern states were lost. What success would the 
historian have that attempted to explain the 
characteristics of these people from the en- 
vironment in which they find themselves to-day? 

Human beings, moreover, are not like chem- 
ical atoms; the same external causes, acting on 
different human aggregates produce unlike 
effects. To one people, a sea would be a bar- 
rier; to another, it is the threshold to a new 
world. The character of a people must, then, 
be always counted with. Certain natural con- 
ditions are capable of producing such and such 
effects if the right people is brought into con- 
tact with them. This power of reaction differs 
not only from people to people but in the same 
people from time to time. How unwise it is to 
attribute too great an influence to natural en- 
vironment is nowhere better illustrated than in 
the history of Greece. The same sea and sky, 
the same mountains and transparent atmos- 
phere, but how different the results to-day! If 
the physical environment of the Greek has not 
changed, the social environment certainly has. 

One of the common fallacies encountered in 
the consideration of this matter of the relation 
of geography to the evolution of man in soci- 
ety is the belief that man emancipates himself 
by degrees from the influence of his physical 
environment. According to this theory, the 
barbarian is more dependent upon nature than 
the man of civilization. This statement of the 
case does not make clear the true situation. 
The savage is bound to nature by few and slen- 
der bonds; the civilized man by many and 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 103 

strong bonds. The latter makes more use of 
nature than the former. He has a greater va- 
riety of resources; when one fails him the 
others serve him. The farmer. who plants but 
a single crop and sees it perish from lack of 
moisture is no less dependent upon nature than 
the savage, who, living from the natural rice 
of the swamp, is driven to the verge of starva- 
tion by the first wind that strips the plants. 

These two limitations made, it is certain that 
geographical environment plays a vastly im- 
portant role in human history. It affects both 
the conditions and the acts of men. It affects 
their bodies through climate and their minds 
through startling natural phenomena. It im- 
pels men of the North to the warm lands of the 
South and controls the direction of the move- 
ment l)y river valleN-s (n;itural highways) or 
checks it by high mountains. It makes im- 
possible the development of a high civilization 
upon islands of the ocean (lack of space); it 
enriches and develops science by the struggle 
with nature, dict-ites man's clothing and even 
his social organization (social and political di- 
vision of the inhabitants of a desert). All of 
these things are not history, but they make 
history intelligible. For however great the 
psychical development of man may be in the 
future, it will always rest upon a physical 
foundation, and this physical side must inevita- 
bly link him to his geographical environment. 

But if the historian turns on the one side to 
the geographer for aid, he turns on the other 
to the psychologist. Historical acts are noth- 



104 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

ing else than the "expression of human feel- 
ing, conceiving and willing, the activities of 
that psychophysical unit that we call the soul 
or the mind." Simmel (Die Probleme der 
Geschitsphilosophie. Berlin, 1S92, p. 33) calls 
psychology the " apriori of historical science." 
It is clearly important, then, that the historian 
should understand something nbout the psychi- 
cal conditions under which the individual or 
society — in part or in whole — act. Not that 
such general knowledge will enable him to de- 
termine what particular psychological fact hap- 
pened at a given time and place, but that he 
will be able to tell what psychological facts 
could not have taken place under given condi- 
tions and he will be helped in the interpreta- 
tion of the facts. 

The common use of collective terms such as 
the state, the church, society, culture, corpora- 
tions has tended to obscure the fact that all 
historical acts are the result of the feeling, 
conceiving, and willing, of individuals. How- 
ever important social psychology may be it 
should never lead us to undervalue the impor- 
tance for the historian of a knowledge of the 
psychology of the individual. 

Such knowledge has always been possessed 
and applied, in some degree, by historians. It 
was, however, "an instinctive knowledge of 
the universal identity of human feeling, think- 
ing, and willing," that the ordinary man makes 
use of in his attempts to understand the acts of 
others; and furthermore an empirical knowl- 
edge of their own mental life, combined with 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 105 

the empirical knowledg-e of the soul life of oth- 
ers drawn from reading and experience. 

This knowledge was employed, for the most 
part, in suppl^dng motives for acts when these 
motives were not given by tradition. Such 
work is most difficult. Its successful accom- 
plishment depends upon the ability to put 
one's self in the place of the historical i)ors()n- 
age and to feel and think as he felt and thought. 
The fact thai like outward acts are often «iiie 
to different inward motives renders the attempt 
to infer these motives a very delicate operation. 
Robespierre favored the Hebertists and they 
attached themselves to him. An Italian noble- 
man had his enemies in his power and instead 
of destroying them he dismissed them with 
gifts; they felt insulted and planned to take 
his life. 

But the empirical knowledge of ps3^cholog- 
ical conditions should be widened and deepened 
by the scientitic study of the mind, and not by 
the study of the sound mind only, but also of 
the diseased mind. The whole attitude toward 
certain classes of phenomena, such as religious 
exaltation and hallucinations, has been changed 
by psychical research. All the historical proc- 
esses of interpretation, combination, and repro- 
duction are conditioned by mental laws and the 
study of these processes can never lead to the 
best results if the laws are not taken into 
account. 

It has been shown in a previous chapter that 
the work of interpretation and combination not 
only calls for a knowledge of the individual 



106 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

psychical, but also of the social-psychical con- 
ditions, or the conditions of mind having their 
roots in the relations of men with one another. 
Whether we look upon these conditions as the 
manifestations of a social mind (Volksgeist) 
matters little; the important thing is that the 
living together of men in society produces re- 
sults that are not simply the mechanical total of 
individual sensations and thoughts; there is an 
additional something characteristic of the whole. 
Ko better illustration can be given than the 
language of a people. It is a product of the 
social spirit. All have contributed to its 
growth, some consciously, others unconsciously, 
Itut of all it may be said " Was er webt, das 
weiss kein Weber" (The weaver knows not 
what he weaves. ) The national consciousness, 
although it exists only in the sensations and 
conceptions of individuals, yet constitutes a 
peculiar whole and exercises a peculiar influ- 
ence. The consciousness that the same general 
conception of the fatherland lives in the minds 
of millions of other men and women preserves 
and even increases the patriotism of the indi- 
vidual. Since, then, social relations call forth 
peculiar psychical effects, these effects may rea- 
sonably constitute matter for investigation and 
the fiekl may be set aside under the head of 
social psychology. 

Although the science has been born it is still 
an infant. So little has been accomplished 
that the historian is obliged to do for himself 
the work that will be done in the future by an 
auxiliary science. Through his own investiga- 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 107 

tions, he must win for himself the necessary 
knowledge of the social-psychical conditions. 
He must appreciate the distinctions of time and 
locality when dealing with the past. Difficult 
as it is to appreciate justly the social-psychical 
conditions of contemporaries who ma}^ be di- 
rectly observed — like the French, Germans, 
and Italians — it becomes infinitely more diffi- 
cult to deal successfully with past ages tliat can 
be studied only indirectly through the sources. 

Only through a knowledge of the social- 
psychical conditions can the historian determine 
what is peculiar to the individual and what the 
common property of the age in which he lived. 
Who would undertake to speak with authority 
of the work of a great artist without having 
first acquainted himself with the condition of 
that particular art in the age in which the artist 
lived? There is no commandment of good his- 
torical work that is more frequently violated 
than the commandment that the writer shall ac- 
quaint himself with the spirit of the age in 
which the events that he would narrate took 
place. And what wonder? The man who un- 
dertakes to familiarize himself with the social- 
psychical conditions before describing the 
events that w^ere conditioned by them often finds 
that life is too short for the completion of his 
task. 

A knowledge of the geographical, the indi- 
vidual-psychical and social-psychical conditions 
is not all that constitutes an acquaintance with 
man's environment. Every individual born into 
an advanced society finds himself surrounded 



108 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

by the vast accumulations inherited from past 
ages. Probably the great superiority of the 
civilized man over the savage is due in a very 
large degree to this fact. Imagine the child of 
cultured parents transferred immediately after 
birth to the care of African negroes and reared 
in their midst. A little reflection will show that 
the wide chasm between his real life and the life 
that he might have led was due to the absence 
of culture accumulations among the Africans. 
How great a blunder Buckle committed in fail- 
ing to take into account the culture conditions 
can be readily seen. While it is true that the 
culture products are the results of historical 
events, they slioukl, nevertheless, be treated as 
independent factors in all historical problems, 
because no historical development has ever 
taken place that has not been influenced by 
some existing culture conditions. 

These culture conditions act, for the most 
part, almost like geographical conditions, since 
they are not subject to important changes 
through the arbitrary acts of individuals or of 
particular generations. Some, it is true, are 
more changeable than others. The constitu- 
tion of a state is more easily changed than the 
language of the people. The culture condi- 
tions, moreover, do not influence all alike. 
"The sun shines equally upon the just and the 
unjust, the educated and the ignorant, the rich 
and the poor; " the literature of a people exerts 
a powerful influence upon a few. a slight in- 
fluence upon many. Then again the influence 
of all the culture products is not the same. 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 109 

The form of the state affects all in much the 
same manner, while the influence of lancjuao^e, 
art, and science differs from individual to indi- 
vidual and from group to group. 

The consideration of the culture conditions 
has been neglected in the past together with the 
other elements of the environment. In certain 
epochs their influence has been so great that the 
historian could not fail to count with them. 
But the treatment of economic conditions in 
connection with the French Revolution, of art 
in the Age of Pericles, of literature in the per- 
iod of the Renaissance and of religion in the per- 
iod of the Reformation does not satisfy the just 
demands of this element in the environmen*^. 
The ideal of the historian — perhaps an impos- 
sible ideal —must be to consider the culture 
conditions as acting continuously and regularly, 
not spasmodically, upon the historical evolu- 
tion, and to trace their iniluence not only upon 
the events but their mutual influence on each 
other. 

Such are the elements of the environment in 
which the historical events take place. With 
this environment the historian must acquaint 
himself and under the influence of it his nar- 
rative must l)e written. 1 he labor of the great 
historians can be appreciated only by those 
who realize how much time must be given to 
the simple eft'ort to reach a point of vantage 
from which the event may be seen in its true 
light. 

From the historical environment the step is 
but a short one to the philosophy of history. 



110 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

It should be noted first of all that there is a dis- 
tinct difference hetyveenj?/uIowj)/iical history — 
a narrative with philosophical reflections — and 
the philosophy of history. The first may con- 
tain a sweeping, comprehensive view of uni- 
versal history, but so long as it retains its 
descriptive character it falls short of the phil- 
osophy of history. For the philosophy of 
history deals not with the description of histor- 
ical events, but with the consideration of the 
universal and fundamental conditions and pro- 
cesses upon which the historical development 
rests. If the historical events are introduced at 
all, it should be simply as illustrative material. 

The content of the philosophy of history con- 
sists of a distinct group of problems, and these 
problems must evidently have to do with his- 
tory or the evolution of man in society. But 
what are these problems? An examination of 
the history of the philosophy of history from 
Augustine to Lotze makes clear that all the 
problems that have presented themselves may 
be grouped under two main heads: (1) How is 
the historical evolution brought about ? and (2) 
What are the results and what the significance 
of the historical evolution? In other words, it 
is the business of the philosophy of history to 
investigate the factors of historical evolution 
and the value of the results of the evolution. 

The analysis of the factors leads to the three 
groups of general conditions that have already 
been treated. The relation of these factors to 
one another and to the historical evolution 
must, if possible, be determined. In the fur- 



HISTORICAL METHOD. m 

ther analysis of the factors, a new set of prob- 
lenis presents itself. Is this psychical be- 
in.o:, the individual of history, a free beino-2 
Can any freedom of the Avill exist in a societr 
where evolution is controlled by natural law? 
Is this belief in the freedom of the will simply 
self deception and is the individual absolutely 
dependent upon external powers or forces? 
And here we rise to the problem of problems. 
v> hat IS the motive force in all history? Is it 
the struo^orie between orood and evil that has 
been gainer on since the fall of man and will 
continue until the last jud^^ment ? (So thou'o-ht 
the philosophers of the Middle A^es.) Is it the 
hand of a personal God, who by rewards and 
punishment leads man on to ever higher desti- 
nies? Or is it the divine idea that has been 
placed in the germ in the soul of man, to be de- 
veloped ororanically in history ? Is it the man- 
ifestation of the God idea itself? Is history 
simply the unfolding of the immanent world- 
spirit? Are the natural laws only the form in 
which theinner, spontaneous will impulses out- 
wardly realize themselves? Do natural laws 
alone control history ? Or is it all accident? 

These problems concerning the factors of 
evolution lead naturally to the problems deal- 
ing with the value of the results of evolution. 
Can we prove that one of the results has been 
th-e perfecting of man and the improvino- of his 
condition? If so, has this progress been regu- 
lar and universal? Have all the social de- 
ments been equally active and equally de- 
veloped, or has the evolution been onesided? 



112 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

Are all the elements capable of participating 
in progress, the moral and artistic equally with 
the intellectual ? Are all peoples called to take 
part in this progress or are there a chosen few? 
Can we even say that only certain classes in 
certain peoples are the sharers of this culture ? 
Finally, what is the measure of progress or of 
regress? 

The problems of the factors and values stated 
above have been answered again and again but 
no satisfactory solution, no solution that does 
justice to all the conditions of the problem, has 
yet been presented. Many of the failures, up 
to the present time, have been due to bad 
method. The most of the work has been done 
by men defective in historical training, who 
have not hesitated to do violence to the facts in 
order to justify their theories. The philosophy 
of history in the future must rest on the science 
of history and grow out of it. It will develop 
as our knowledge of history develops and its 
aim will be to comprehend historical facts as 
regarded from the most universal point of 
view, that of general human evolution, that of 
humanity itself. 



CHAPTER X. 



SYNTHETIC OPERATIONS: EXPOSITION. 

IN the precedinor chapters, I have described 
the process by which an historian discov- 
ers the source material related to his sub- 
ject and obtains the use of it; I have explained 
the critical examination to which the material, 
when found, must be submitted to determine 
its genuineness, to localize, and to analyze it; 
1 have indicated the method for determining 
the value of the sources admitted as evidence 
and for establishing the facts contained in the 
sources; iinall}-, I have shown how the facts 
must be imagined and grouped, the gaps in the 
evidence filled in by constructive reasoning, the 
]ihysica\ psychical, and social environment con- 
structed and the factors and processes of his- 
torical development (philosophy of history) be 
understood. 

It remains for the historian to communicate 
to others the results of his research. This last 
to])i;^ is treated by Bernheim under the head 
L)arstellung and by Seignobos in the two chap- 
ters entitled Construction des formules ghierales 
and li.r-position. In his two chapters, Seignobos 
really treats more topics than are embraced in 
Bernheim's Darstellung. The first chapter 
deals with the subject matter of I.^arstellung 
and adds a few words on the philosophy of 
history; the chapter on Exposition is devoted 



114 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

to the question of scientific form in the narra- 
tive and is not treated by Bernheim. 

The problem of Expodtloii or Darstellung 
is by no means simply a question of style, 
although, as Seignobos says, " il n'y a pas 
d'hislorien complct sans une bonne langue," 
and the reason is that " pour atteindre des faits 
aussi f uyants que les fails sociaux, une langue 
feruie et precise est uu instrument indispens- 
able." But the need of a good command of 
language, of a power to use exact, scientific ex- 
pressions in dealing with facts as elusive as 
social facts, is not the topic to be emphasized in 
this chapter; we have to do here with a question 
of a more difficult nature, namely, how may the 
results of the investigation be communicated, 
in as correct a manner as possible^ to others? 

Not all the results can be commuuicaied. 
However limited the topic of investigation, not 
all the results of that investigation can possibly 
be presented in all their fullness of detail. An 
historian who attempted to communicate all 
the facts that he h id found concerning the life 
of Napoleon would never find readers. It is 
a practical question. Obliged to choose be- 
tween '* being complete and unknowable or of 
being knowable and incomplete," historical 
S3'^nthesis naturally decided in favor of the 
latter. 

If not all the results of the investigation can 
be communicated, it follows that there must be 
condensation and this condensation must be 
performed in such a manner that the narrative 
will, as far as possible, correspond to the le- 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 115 

ality as it appeared to the investigator. The 
relation of the narrative to the mass of con- 
ceptions contained in the views of the man 
who has seen the evidence first-hand has been 
compared by Bernheim to the relation of the 
piano arrangement of a great orchestral work 
to the work itself. The idea is easily grasped; 
the execution of the idea is unusually difficult. 
To condense, to omit unimportant details, to 
retain the right proportions in the condensed 
material, is a thing calling for an infinite amount 
of skill. 

The selection of the material must depend 
upon the theme. Details omitted from a uni- 
versal history would tind place in the history 
of a state, of a province, or of an individual. 
In a church history, one kind of material would 
be emphasized, in an industrial history another. 
A good historian may learn much in the matter 
of composition from the artist, for the good 
historical narrative is characterized by boldness 
of execution and subordination of details. 

The most helpful thing that has yet been 
written on condensation is Seignobos' excellent 
chapter entitled Constuction desfarmules g^€- 
rales. "History," he writes, "to become a 
science, must elaborate the raw material found 
in the facts. It should condense the facts into 
descriptive formulae, both qualitative and quan- 
titative. It should search for the relations be- 
tween the facts, relations that form the last con- 
clusion of every veritable science." Historical 
facts, human facts can not be reduced to a few 
simple formulae like chemical formulae, but 



116 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

"history, as well as all sciences of life, has need 
of des<.'riptive formulae to express the character 
of the different phenomena." The formula 
should be short that it may be manageable; 
precise, that it may give an exact it'ea of the 
fcict. Yet brevity and precision conflict. To 
obtain brevity, we must eliminate details, while 
characteristic details alone give precise knowl- 
edge of human events. A compromise is nec- 
essary; all that is not strictly necessary must 
be suppressed, but the work of suppression 
must cease when it leads to the sacrifice of char- 
acteristic traits. If the demands of precision 
are lost sight of, "all history is reduced to a 
mass of vague generalities, uniform for all time, 
with the exception of some proper names and 
dates." 

In constructing these formulae one would do 
well to "employ as often as possible concrete 
and descriptive terms; their meaning is always 
clear." That is to say, "collective groups 
should be descril)ed by collective names and 
not by abstract substantives (as monarchy, 
state, democracy, reformation, revolution)." 
When a word or a group of words constituting 
a formula is employed, there should be no un- 
certainty as to the meaning that attaches to 
them. What different meanings attach to the 
w )rd monarch when applied to Clovis, Louis 
XL, Louis XIV., Louis XVI., and Louis 
Philip! This misunderstanding may be avoided 
b}' a description of the term when first used. 
Such a device may mar the artistic unity of the 
uarraiive, but the historian is primarily a scieu- 



HISTORICAL METHOD. llT 

tist and only secondarily an artist. Belloc's 
"Danton" (1899) is a good illustration of the 
compulsion that the historian feels to make his 
general terms convey a precise meaning. Tac- 
itus would have won the eternal gratitude 
of students of the Middle Ages had he but in- 
dicated the meaning that attached to abstract 
Latin substantives when used to describe prim- 
itive German life. 

After dividing his formulae into two classes, 
qualitative and quantitative, Seignobos subdi- 
vides his qualitative formulae into (1) those 
descriptive of general facts (habits and evolu- 
tions) and (2) unique facts (events). 

"■ General facts consist of acts often repeated 
and common to ujany men. Their character^ 
extent^ and duration must be determined." 

To determine the character, the common 
traits of a usage or institution are drawn from 
many individual cases and expressed in a for- 
mula; the individual variations are neglected. 
Serfdom in a certain period (jf the Middle Ages, 
the city life of a like period, might be treated 
in this wa)^ If the usage is that of language, 
laws, regulations, etc., it should never be for- 
gotten that formulae of this kind express only su- 
perficial facts; "in language the written words, 
not the })ronunc;ation; in religion, the dogmas 
and official rites, not the real beliefs of the mass 
of the people. * * * In all of these cases 
the knowledge of conventional formulae should 
be supplemented some day by a study of the 
real habits." 

To determine the extent of a habit, one de- 



118 HISTORICAL METHOD 

termines the area of its distribution and the 
point where it is most practiced; for its dura- 
tion, the time of its first and last appearance 
and the epoch of its greatest activity must be 
noted. 

In the case of unique facts, many can not be 
united under the same formula, and it is neces- 
sary to decide what facts shall be sacrificed. 
Personal taste shoulJ not determine the choice 
of facts to be retained. There is but one stand- 
ard that may be employed, and that is the role 
played by the fact in human affairs. " Persons 
and events that have clearly influenced the 
march of evolution must be preserved. The 
mark by which one recoo;nizes them is that the 
evolution could not be described without mak- 
ing mention of them." 

In constructing the formula for an individual 
we must draw our traits from his biography 
and habits; from his biography we learn the 
physiological, educational, and social influences 
under which he lived; from his habits we form 
an idea of his conception of life, his dominant 
tastes, his habitual actions, and his rules of con- 
duct. From all these details, w^e form a portrait 
or formula of the individual. 

To construct the formula for an event, we 
must fix its character and extent. The charac- 
ter consis's of the traits that distinguish this 
event from all others. The formula should 
contain the following points: one or more indi- 
viduals, impelled by certain motives, working 
in the midst of certan material conditions (lo- 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 119 

cality, instruments), performed certain acts, 
and the acts produced a certain modification 
of society. The extent of the event should 
show the region where it occurred and that af- 
fected by it, together with the moment when 
the action began and that when it was finished. 
The formulae of quality should be supple- 
mented by those of quantity. The five methods 
employed in formulating quantity as given by 
Seignobos are (1) measurement (psychological 
facts can not be measured), (2) enumeration, 
(3) evaluation, (4) sampling, (5) generalization. 
They decrease in exactness from the first to the 
last. 

There are certain dangers to be guarded 
against in the employment of each method. 

In the second, it should be noted that the 
method of statistics applies to fac's that have 
in common a definite character of which use is 
made that the facts may be counted. These 
facts, however, are not homogeneous and may 
have but one thing in common (crimes, suicides, 
workmen, strikes). The danger is that the 
statistician may believe that he has described the 
the facts with scientific precision, when he has 
only counted them. 

Evaluation is an enumeration covering a por- 
tion of the field and based upon the assumption 
that the same proportion holds good in the rest 
of the field of investigation. The results are 
unreliable if it is not known that the portion 
examined is exactly similar to the other por 
tions of the field. 



120 



HISTORICAL MKTIIOD. 



"Sampling," that consists in makino; an enu- 
meration of units taken from different portions 
of the Held of investigation, is of value when 
the samples are representative of ihe whole. 
They should be taken from very ditierent 
points and from groups living under very dif- 
ferent conditions, that the exceptions may bal- 
ance one another. 

" Generalization is only an instinctive method 
of simplification." It is unconsciously applied 
in dealing with all complex human events. It is 
an unconscious "sampling." It may be ren- 
dered correct by submitting it to the conditions 
of "sampling." To generalize correctly one 
must (1) indicate the field of generalization 
(country, group, class, epoch); (2) be sure that 
all the facts generalized upon are similar in all 
the points concerned; (3) be certain that the 
cases selected are types, and (4) take care that 
the cases considered are more numerous as 
the points of resemblance are less numerous. 

The descriptive formulae, qualitative and 
quantitative, do not represent the last stage of 
the synthetic operations. Still larger groups, 
more general -formulae must be constructed. 
In forming groups more and more general, the 
procedure is the same as that described above. 
At each step in advance some of the character- 
istics of the smaller groups are dropped until 
at last only universal human characteristics re- 
main. In this manner, the formulae for a lan- 
guage, a religion, a society, or an event are 
constructed. When this condensation can be 
carried no ftirther, the attempt may be made to 



HISTORICAL, METHOD. 1"21 

classify the groups by comparison. The two 
methods of classification suggested by Seig- 
nobos are (1) comparison of similar categories 
of special facts, such as languages, religions, 
and arts, and (2) comparison of "real groups of 
real individuals. " The first is ' ' an abstract classi- 
fication that isolates one species of facts from 
all others;" the second is "a concrete classifi- 
cation similar to the classifications in zoology, 
when not the functions but the animal forms 
are clavSsified." The difiiculty with this last 
classification is due to the disagreement as to 
the characters that should constitute the basis 
of resemblance: shall they be political, eco- 
nomic, intellectual, or religious? Upon this 
point no agreement has been reached. 

The problem of problems still remains un- 
solved: How to classify all of the groups or 
formulae and thus construct a grand ensemble 
embracing all human society. Some historians 
say that it is impossible, but it continues to be 
an ideal worth striving for. It is clear that 
these groups are not isolated in reality and 
that a change in one brings about a change in 
the others. If there is unity (Zusammenhang), 
it will be possible in time to construct the for- 
mula for this unity. 

Having formulated the results of the investi- 
gation it simply remains for the historian to 
commit these formulae to paper. Here we 
touch one of the weak points in historical 
work. The fact that the writing of history 
has so often been left to men with no scientifio 
training, men whose main purpose was to write 



122 HISTORICAL METHOD. 

to entertain, and who repeatedly sacrificed the 
truth in their effort to please — sacrificed the 
truth because it was commonplace and unat- 
tractive — this fact has made it difficult for the 
historical narrative to take on a scientific form. 
It has hecn said too often that a liistorical 
work sh(Hild be a work of art. The thing may- 
be ab.-oliitely impossible. The completeness 
and attractiveness of the work depend upon 
the quantity of the sources and the character of 
the sources. Both of these things are beyond 
the control of the investigator. The first de- 
mand made upon the historian is to tell the 
truth, to tell us exactly what he knows and 
what he does not know. If there are any gaps 
in the evidence, it is his business to point them 
out. We should remember that he is not an in- 
fallible authority speaking from inspiration, but 
just a plain fallible man who should be required 
to prove ever}^ statement that he makes. 

The demand for proof is not made by the 
general public; it must be made by the body of 
historical students. W hat right have untrained 
men, who have not mastered the subject of 
which they speak, what moral right have these 
men to publish histories for the education of 
the multitude? None whatever. It is simply 
a business proposition. These popular his- 
tories in four or five large volumes are the dime 
novels of historical literature. It should be the 
business of teachers and writers of history to 
put an end to the existence of such works by 
creating a taste for something better. This 
work may be done in two ways: ( 1 ) by prepar- 



HISTORICAL METHOD. 123 

ing histories that are at the same time popular 
and sound (Adams' Civilization of the Middle 
Ages), (2) by training in historical study in the 
schools. The teachers of history must be stu- 
dents of history, and the hovs and girls must 
be taught what proof is in history just as they 
are taught what proof is in mathematics and 
the other sciences. Having learned what histor- 
ical proof is they must be trained to give it 
themselves and to demand it of others. 

The historical narrative must, then, take on 
a scientific form when it is written for students. 
The sources of information must be indicated 
and evidence exactly cited in support of gen- 
eral statements. The writer must do his work 
in such a way that the reader may be able 
to control his every statement. Less time will 
be wasted when this rule is rigorously fol- 
lowed. What would we think of an investi- 
gator in chemistry who gave only results, ma le 
no mention of the processes by which results 
were reached, and carefully destroyed all 
traces of his methods as soon ; s his work was 
accomplished? We t^hould hardly credit him 
with common sense. And yet that is just tiie 
course that many historians have pursued in 
the past, and that many are pursuing to-day. 
Many of the instructors in our colleges by 
their irrational methods of instruction are cul- 
tivating that sort of thing with their students, 
and until these teachers develop a scientific 
conscience this state of things is likely to 
continue. 

The task that I set myself in the opening 



1^-J^ HISTOEICAL METHOD. 

chapter has been accomplished. I then st:ited 
my belief that there would never be better 
teaching of history until there are more stu- 
dents of history among the teachers. It was 
that conviction that lead to this attempt to 
present in a brief outline the substance of the ' 
method of historical research as found in the 
works of Bernheim and of Langlois and Seig- 
nobos. Jf it opens the eyes of any teacher to 
the necessity of this training and leads them 
on to study the works that I have so constantly 
cited, I shall have done all that I hoped to do. 



EUROPEAN HISTORY STUDIES. 

FRED MORROW FLING, Ph.D., 
Professor of European History. University of Nebraska. 

EDITOR. 

A monthly publication. Subscription 40 cents. Extracts from 
tne sources; translations from the writers of the period studied. 

Vol. III. The French Revolution. 

No. I. Sept., 1599. Absolutism in the Church: The Consti- 
tution. 
No. II. Oct., 1899. Stru<-gle against Ab.solutism in the 
xr^ TTT XT ,on„ ^<-'liurch; Certificates of Confssion. 

No- III. Nov., 1899. The Church and the Philosophers. 
No. I\ . Dec, 1899. Reform Edicts; Turgot 

S^' vt" it?.-' Iq?^- The Administration of Finance; Necker. 
No. VI. Feb., 1900. The Notables. 

No. yil. March, 19J0. The King and the Parliaments. 

No. \ III. April, 1900. The Age of Pamphlets. 

No. IX. May, 19.0. The Elections to the States General 

No. X.June, 1900. The Cahiers of Complaints. 

Vol. II. Civilization of the Middle Ages. 

J898-1899. No. I. Christian and Pagan. No. II. The Teutonic 
Barbarians. No. III. Selections from the Koran No IV 
Chivalry and the Mode of Warfare. No. V. Feudalism' 
No.M. Monasticism. No. VII. The Jews of Angevin 
England. No. \III. Kise of Cities. No. IX. The Trades 
of Pans. No. X. Mediaeval Science. 

Bou Id in do h, 6o cents; for introduction, 50 cents net. 

Vol. I, Greek and Roman Civilization. 

'^^'' p«Ltu?,vf-;„ "^4^ ?°™^J'^ Age. No. II. The Athenian 
Constitution. No. III. Spartan Life. No. IV. Alexander's 
Mode of Warfare. No. V. The Achaen League. No VI 
Roman Constitution No. VII. Roman Life of the First 
Punic War. No. VIII. Roman Life of the JugMrthine 
Period. N .. IX. Roman Life Under the Empire No X 
Roman Laws. 

Bou nd in clotii, 60 cents; for introduction. 50 cents net. 

BOOKS ON METHOD 

Studies in European and American History. 

F. M. Fling and H. W. Caldwell. 

.^■^ ^5°^ °/ °'*'^'" ?°*i, P''g^^ setting forth the principles, methods 
and advantages of the -'Source Method." Containing a so studies 
01 such subjects as The Grecian Period. The Romans, Absolute 
Monarchies, The French Revolution, Early Virginia History 
Early Massachusetts Laws, and others. Cloth. Price, $1.00. 

Outlines of Historical Method. 

F. M. Fling, Ph.D. 

The Leaflets 

All the Leaflets named above are kept in stock. Single conv 5 
cents each. Ten or more copies of one number, 4 cents each Ten 
or more subscriptions to the current volume, or ten or more sets 

lic^^ SamXVf°thTf.^'J,^r'''^' '^'^^ *° °°^ ^'^'iress aTsO cen s 
eaen. bamples of the Leaflets sent free to any address. 

Address J. H. MILLER, Publisher, Lincon, Neb. 



No. 


I. 


Sept., 


1899. 


No. 


II. 


Oct., 


1899. 


No 


III. 


Nov., 


1899. 


No. 


IV. 


Dec, 


1899. 


No. 


V. 


Jan , 


1900. 


No. 


VI. 


Feb. 


1900. 


No. 


VII. 


March 


, 1900. 


No. 


VIII 


April, 


1900. 


No. 


IX. 


May, 


1900. 


No. 


X. 


June, 


19 0. 



AMERICAN HISTORY STUDIES. 

H. W. CALDWELL, A. M., 
Professor of American History, University of Nebrask' 



A monthly publication. Subscription 40 cents. Extracts from 
the sources of American History, Early Laws, Treaties, State 
Papers, Letters, Speeches, etc 

Vol. III. Territorial Development: Expansion. 

Territorial Boundaries. 

First National Boundaries. 

The Northwest Territory. 

Acquisition of Louisiana. 

Purchase of Florida. 

Annexation of Texas. 

Conquest of California and New Mexico. 

Alaska and Hawaii. 

West Indies and the Pailippines. 

Vol. II. Some American Legislators. 

1898-1899. No. I. G.illatin. No. II J. Q .\da ns. No. III. Clay. 
No. IV. Webster. No. V. Calhoun. No. VI. Sumner. 
No. VII. Dout,'las. No. VIII. Seward. No. IX. Chase. 
No. X. Bla.ne. 

Vol. I. A Survey of American History. 

1897- 1898. No. I. Founding of thp Colonies. No. II Develop- 
ment of Union among the Colonies. No. III. Cause of tiie 
Revolution. No. IV. Formaiion of the Constitution. No. 
V, Growth of Nationality. No. VI. Slavery (1). No VII. 
Sin very (-) No. VIII Civil War and Reconstruction. 
No. IX. Foreign Relations. No. X. Industrial Develop- 
ment. [Extra. Early Colonial Laws. 5 cents. J 

BOOKS ON METHOD 

Studies in European and American History. 
F. M. Fling and H. W. Caldwell. 

A Dook of over 300 pages setting forth the principles, methods, 
and advantages of the "Source Method." Containing also studies 
on such subjects as The Grecian Period. The Romans. Absolute 
Monarchies, The French Revolution, Early Virginia History, 
Early Massacnusetts Laws, and others. Cloth. Price, $1 00. 

Outlines of Historical Method. 

F. M. FUNG. Ph.D. 

This volume contains some of the strongest papers yet published 
in English on Method in History. It treats clearly the subjects 
of E.sternal and Internal Criticism of Sources and Synthetio 
Operations. Cloth. Price. 60 cents. 

The Leaflets 

All the Leaflets named above are kept in stock. Single copy, h 
cents each. Ten or more copies of one number, 4 cents each. Ten 
or more subscriptions to the current volume, or ten or more sets 
of any previous volume unbound, sent to one address at 30 cent* 
each. Samples of the Leaflets sent free to any address. 

Address J. H. MILLER. Publisher, Lincon, Neb. 

■^v^ 810 -m 





















.^^ s^\.:% '9-, ,-o- 












v'v- 



x>^- . 



\^ . . 



^,<^' 









'/■ 


.^^^' 


o5 -n*. ' 
\> * ^ ° " / ^ 






:<■ 




\^ °<. : 1 




1 1 ■ 




.,>>^^' 


'^>. 

■>*, 


■%r 



V 



^'■I Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proce; 

A' Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 

^c 0^ '^■^ ^ Treatment Date: APR £002 

N,'^^ ■''^. ^ .^ ./^. ^^'^''- PreservationTechnologie 

o'^~- '^ ' ''* ^^ of'' '^C *W°'"-D LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATIC 

V^ . . ,. 'V'- * s 1 ^ ■ ■;Ji s ' « / ■ 111 Thomson Park Drive 

' ^ '^ ^V s ""^./T^K. ''^ CranberryTownship. PA 16066 




,-^^' 



\0 < 



»4 O 



fv 



^. -TV - : '^ 



'7* ,.00. . J w» ^ 



ii 






'^^^0 



.^^v 

























% 4 



A ,0 



' " * 



^" ^x. '^ 



